


Shaking the Habitual

by nellywrites



Category: Glee, We Will Rock You - Elton/May/Taylor
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Fate & Destiny, Friendship, Gen, Inspired by Music, Pastiche, Reincarnation, V for Vendetta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2629187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nellywrites/pseuds/nellywrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>300 years into the future, in the land of Suetopia, mainstream commercial conformity reigns-- citizens watch the same movies, listen to computer-generated music, wear the same clothes and hold the same thoughts and opinions. Musical instruments are forbidden, and rock and roll is unknown.  Twenty-two year old Blaine Anderson works as an engineer in the Department of Music Programming. Ever since he can remember, he’s been plagued by strange dreams in which he’s standing in front of a crowd of thousands, and there is screeching, banging, thumping, cheering. He doesn’t know what they mean, but he knows they’re important. One day he meets June Dolloway,  who tells him his dreams are not dreams but memories of the World that Was, and that Blaine has the gift of song, and his gift will help restore society to the way it should be. Written for Blaine Anderson Big Bang 2014</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> This work is largely based on the musical 'We Will Rock You' which is itself based on the music of Queen. I call it 'dystopian' fiction but I mean the Glee version of a dystopia, which entails some level of humor and crack. That said the story borrows a lot from other totalitarian classics, particularly Orwell's '1984' and Alan Moore's 'V for Vendetta'. Some of the dialogue was pulled and adapted from those three sources. The opening paragraph is an homage to "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." There is quite a bit of music referenced here. Some of these songs I do recommend listening to. These would be 'We Share Our Mothers' Health", "Heartbeats" and "Bird". There are playlist links at the end of the page. thanks to my beta, Kim, and my artist batkonehat for making this whole process more fun and bearable. You can find batkonehat's drawing embedded in the second chapter.

 

 

I have been thinking about The Dreamer for many months. In a way, he has always been on my mind, but only in the light of these recent reflections do I finally see him clearly. For so long I reduced him to the memory of that first time I saw him from the window of my parents' high-rise apartment: head bowed, a fist in the air, yellow jacket slightly flapping against the gentle morning breeze that lifted from the bay. To my five year old self he was untouchable, larger than life. An idea. Like the action figures I used to play with. Or perhaps more accurately, like the portrait of The Face we had all grown up with. Now I look back on that day and wonder at his bravery and his recklessness. I look at my son and I can't help but think of the boy The Dreamer was before that fateful morning; still only Blaine Anderson, young and uncertain, standing at the window of his flat, looking down on Union Square, The Face staring at him from the opposite side, and not knowing what to do:

 

 


	2. Everybody Wants to Rule The World

**1.**

  


_“Rise and shine, sloppy babies. This is your Mother speaking...”_

Blaine Anderson woke with the sun, the voice of Mother Sue shaking him from restless sleep, leaving him reeling from the half-remembered dream. The curtains glided open, as if pulled by invisible hands, and the nascent sunrise illuminated the bedroom, but still Blaine would not part his eyes. He clenched them shut and fought to keep the images from breaking down into the incomprehensible blocks of dreaming.

_“... Time's a-wasting as another sun rises over this great land of Suetopia and I can hear your whining all the way over here. Five more minutes, mom, whine, whine, whine. It has come to my attention that exercise quotas are at an all time low. Out of all the offenses, none more despicable than laziness and complacency.”_

In a single practiced movement, Blaine sat up in the bed and opened the top drawer of his nightstand table. He pulled out his tablet and stylus and put them aside and reached into the false bottom of the drawer for a pad of paper and an antiquated ball-point ink pen, shaking it to draw the ink toward the tip. At the time of this story, such writing implements were not made anymore. Paper wasn't common either. There was nothing you couldn’t do with a tablet and voice recognition software. Blaine had procured the pad and pen in an offbeat shop in the outskirts of The City. The kind of shop that would earn him raised eyebrows and wary looks if the wrong people (or the right people depending whom you asked) got wind of it.

_“But I know nothing upsets my children more than disappointing their mother. So all of you will complete an extra hour of Sue 90x this quarter. To make this easier for all of you, additional sessions will be added to the broadcast schedules on your local fitness channel. So you see, you don't even have to leave the comfort of your own home. Don't ever let anyone tell you your mother doesn't indulge you.”_

The notepad was well used. It had pages upon pages crammed with Blaine's frantic and unpracticed penmanship. As he flipped and flipped to find a blank page, the pictures in his head were already fading, although the feel of them remained imprinted on Blaine's skin. It was always the same: pleasure, exhilaration, awe. He scribbled the new words with urgency, before they too vanished from his consciousness, like the dream they had come from. There they remained, inked and barely legible, as all the ones that came before:

  


**“You can be anything you want to be.**

**Just turn yourself into anything you think that you could ever be.”**

  


Another senseless combination of words to join the collection. If only he knew what they meant.

 

_“Now get your saggy, lard butts off the bed and get to work. The gears of this fine-tuned machine will not turn themselves.”_

 

The overhead lights in the bedroom flickered on as Mother Sue's morning address faded into the morning announcements, and Blaine finally jumped out of bed. The curtains, already parted by the timer that controlled the apartment's entire electrical output, revealed the world outside.

Dawn had always been Blaine’s favorite time of the day. For those brief moments when the light of the world turned, the gleam of the advertising screens appeared almost natural, subdued, more like a glow instead of a glare. Every morning he stood before the glass panes of his bedroom window and tried to squeeze out some childhood memory that should tell him whether The City had always been quite like this--vistas of brightly lit pixels and branding-- but to no avail. That was the only reality he remembered. It was as if Suetopia, and thus Blaine's entire world, had no visible past at all.

The vast network of screens hummed and flickered, ever in movement, constantly updating themselves to show the newest information, the newest product, the newest gossip, ensuring there was never a moment of idleness. But in the center, unchanging and placed higher than the rest of the oversized advertisements, was The Face. Blaine found it without much effort; it wasn't hard, as it hung directly in front of Blaine's building, lording over Union Square. MOTHER KNOWS BEST, the caption said. A resolute statement turned truth nobody could escape from. From across the town square, the cunning eyes looked deep into Blaine’s own.

  


**…**

 

Blaine stripped out of his cotton pajamas and tapped out the authorization code on the control panel that would start the shower. The number 10:00 appeared on the screen. It was a step above from last week's seven and Blaine was grateful for the extra time, wishing, not for the first time, that he could linger beneath warm spray indefinitely. But as long as they kept siphoning water from the rivers and right into the energy drink factories, water rationing would continue. No way around it.

Blaine kept his eyes fixed on the timer as he washed and when exactly 65 seconds remained, he stepped out of the shower. It wasn't a rational impulse, and yet every morning, without fail, Blaine chose to end his shower before the spray automatically shut off.

He wrapped a clean towel around his waist and walked over to his closet, his skin still damp and tacky. Unthinkingly, Blaine picked the first garment in a row of identical and perfectly pressed uniforms, and then draped it across his bed as he finished drying. Like all Party members and employees of Suetopia Global, Blaine wore a uniform made from thick, sturdy wool. It was a distinguishing feature. One that set him apart—and above—the working masses. It consisted of a military style jacket that buttoned in the front and a pair of practical trousers. Each piece was decorated with two single white stripes, parallel to one another, that traveled from shoulder to wrist, then hip to ankle; the stripes marked his rank. His particular uniform was a vibrant red, like the color of maraschino cherries or licorice candy. He donned each piece of his uniform then returned to the bathroom to fix his hair.

The morning broadcast continued on in the background as Blaine adjusted the collar of his jacket in the mirror, making sure it stood up proudly as it was supposed to. The tinny, staticky voice sounded very excited over the new line of products that promised to perfect your skin in just one week. Never mind that the creams produced and marketed a mere six months previous had promised the same.

_“Always something new..."_

The motion activated speakers installed all over the apartment turned on and off in sequence as Blaine traveled from room to room—into the bedroom, and down the hallway to the kitchen—the signal triggered by his movement. And so the voice hovered over his shoulder like an unwanted insect.

_“... Suetopia, all your world loves you.”_

 

 

**…**

  


It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking ten to 8:00. Blaine Anderson, his chin nuzzled into his chest in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Suetopia Tower.

The lobby was bustling with the frenetic energy and noise of employees traveling to their respective places before the cutoff time and Blaine stood in the midst of it all. Suetopia Tower was the tallest building in the city, boasting 150 stories up into the sky, most of which Blaine had never even seen, as access was restricted. The Tower was actually made up of two tapered and spindly buildings, connected only by the spacious atrium in the first floor, and a bridge across the restricted 87th floor. It stood right in the center of The City, tall and proud like a formidable sentinel. It was home to both Suetopia’s center of commerce and government. Like anything worthy of Mother Sue, S Tower, as it was called for short, was both stark and opulent. The outside was completely made up of steel and tempered glass, and at night the identical towers glinted like icicles on a snowy landscape. While on the inside of the building the design was clean, minimal and efficient. Its floors were white marble, and always polished to absolute perfection by the janitorial staff lead by Mr. Figgins.

At the end of the atrium hung a portrait of a middle-aged woman with short blonde hair. One corner of her mouth was lifted in the subtlest of smirks, and the picture was designed in such a way that her eyes followed you in every direction, no matter where you turned. Underneath the face the caption read MOTHER KNOWS BEST. In this particular poster, Mother Sue wore a blue tracksuit uniform with white stripes down the length of her arms and was posing with a bullhorn. There were other versions of the poster. In some of them she held a stopwatch, in others a whistle. All these were the symbols of hard work, and of the value of time. Time, the Manifesto said, was money. And money made the world go round.

Blaine stopped in front of the portrait and looked into the eyes that had always seemed almost alive to him. They were no different that morning. Blaine had never seen Mother Sue in person, he didn’t know anyone who had, but he felt that he intimately knew her stare. That if she were staring at him from somewhere inside a crowd, he'd know it was her. It was a deeply unnerving feeling.

                                                                                  

After a second of contemplation he moved to join the crowd waiting for an elevator to the North Tower, where his department was located. The elevator doors slid open and Blaine touched his ID card against the reader and waited for the system to confirm his destination. His eyes automatically found the camera located in the corner and then swept across the faces of the other occupants. They all had that glazed-over, ambivalent expression: neither exuberant nor displeased, but serene. It was the expression of someone who didn't know doubt. Unfortunately for Blaine, he couldn't remember a time when doubt didn't gnaw at his insides.

The elevator stopped with a subtle _ping_ and the system announced they'd arrived at the 27th floor: Department of Artistic Propaganda. Blaine stepped out, bumping shoulders with a few others inside the elevator, and walked down the long corridor toward his corner of the building, passing the glass doors of the other divisions. Behind him, security cameras whirred, following his path. He wondered if there would ever come a day when they would fade into the background noise of quotidiannes.

At the end of the corridor Blaine stopped before a glass door with the words MUSIC PROGRAMMING embossed on them. He pressed his palm to the identification system and the doors opened with a whoosh.

“ _Welcome: Anderson, Blaine D_ ,” a mechanical voice spoke.

The lights in the department were already on, but a quick peek showed Director Schuester's office was empty. It was not in itself an odd occurrence. Director Schuester often disappeared to places unknown to Blaine. Just as well. Blaine had always preferred working without Schuester hovering around. Something about the man set Blaine on edge. He tried too hard to make it seem like he was on your side. He liked to roll up his sleeves and work side by side with his subordinates, just to show them he was one of them. For Blaine, each of the Director’s attempts only served to highlight how removed he was from their reality.

Blaine set his breakfast shake aside--equal parts of banana, strawberries and pineapple, a shot of wheat grass juice and a teaspoon of Sue's Protein Powder-- and powered up the systems in his workstation, and one by one the wall of screens came to life, casting a bluish glow across the room. Blaine's corner of the lab consisted of six different monitors placed across two rows, all connected to the mainframe, and at the bottom was the control console, which had all sorts of dials, knobs and buttons. There were seven other identical workstations in the department, but at that time Blaine’s was the only one getting full-time use.

He sat down and punched in his ID code, officially checking in for work. Automatically, he clicked his way into his inbox and proceeded to print out the day's assignment. The printer spat out the programming sheets and Blaine plucked them from the tray without thought, spreading them out on the surface in front of him.

According to the sheet, the title of the track was to be "We Share Our Mother's Health". Blaine didn't look at the lyrics any further than the casual once over he needed to gather the theme of the song, and only to gain a sense of what the backing track needed to sound like. He remembered his first days as a programmer, when he read and reread the lyrics before he even finished powering up all the systems, trying to decode and anticipate every possible interpretation of the refrains. Best to be prepared, he used to say. He didn't anymore. Not even when it was time to program the voices. He couldn't look at the words and the sounds as a complete work, but rather had to break it down piece by piece, make it incomprehensible. He didn't listen to the tracks, either, not after he was done with them. If asked to explain, he wouldn't be able to put to words exactly why his work upset him. He only knew that it did. He had long since stopped considering what he did as _his_. It wasn't. It belong to Suetopia. He was just a man pushing buttons.

The programming chart consisted of a series of numbers and symbols, each corresponding to a number and symbol found on the console keyboard. This was known as the key. The key usually contained anywhere from 6 to 18 symbols. It was Blaine's job to arrange the series of symbols, which represented sounds, into a coherent sequence of sound, always keeping in mind the message behind the lyrics. Lyrics which of course were not written by him. Although he'd proved himself to be a remarkable programmer, he'd yet to receive the promotion that would allow him to dabble into songwriting. To speak for Mother Sue was an honor he had yet to earn.

The truth was that as uneasy as the whole process made him at times, there was something peaceful and right that came with the moment when Blaine would lower the massive headphones over his ears, like a switch flicking on and it was time to work.

“We Share Our Mother's Health” was to be a patriotic song, subtly political. Which meant it should rouse. He'd open with a series of claps then, to gain attention. Then a cry to rally, sustained for exactly ten seconds. No more, no less. Experience had shown that was the ratio listeners responded to the best. Blaine touched the appropriate buttons and watched as the track started to take shape up on one of the monitors; spikes and valleys depicting its ups and downs. The opening salvo done, Blaine moved on to work on the song's background, what Blaine liked to refer to as the spine—that from which everything else hinged.

He momentarily looked back at the key to remind himself of what he had to work with. Not much. Only seven symbols. Still though, if he got creative he could make that G7 sound like two different things, if he fiddled with the controls enough, stretched the sound out to make it thinner. Yes, that would work.

He pushed a few buttons, adjusted the timing and it came to life, the sound of the spine-- a steady _taaht ta-ta-tat ta-ta tat_ that would run in the background throughout the entire song. He listened to it on a loop, over and over until he felt the next beat come to him. Time to add layers. First a _pummm-pu-pum pu-pum-pummm_ that reminded Blaine of a bouncy ball, and then a springy sound that coiled on itself. He continued on like this, building pieces on top of pieces, and then playing them back, until he was mostly satisfied with the sketch produced. There would be time to get fancy later.

He was in the middle of programming a particularly tricky combo when Director Schuester, the department head, stood in the doorway to the lab, a young woman standing shyly beside him. She was the new employee, brought in to replace Blaine's old partner. Blaine didn't have to wait for an introduction to know this. If her eager smile wasn't enough of a tell, her brand new shiny uniform would finish giving her away. What caught Blaine’s interest though was the lack of stripes on her uniform. She had no rank yet, which told Blaine the young woman was brand spanking new, and not a transfer from another department. The past two years they’d struggled with getting new people, let alone anyone who’d tested in right out of the Institute.

Blaine paused his work just in time to hear Schuester introduce the girl as a Ms. Marley Rose, a recent graduate of the Institute, and a bright new talent who would surely help usher their division even further into the future. It was the same speech Schuester gave for all the new recruits. Even for Blaine himself, once upon a time. For six months Blaine had been the only full-time programmer, after his old partner's ungraceful and sudden exit. Having someone working in the next station over again—especially someone ranked lower— would require some getting used to. But he couldn’t deny he wasn’t intrigued by her.

Blaine got up from his seat and shook Marley's hand. There was something sweet and open about the new girl that made Blaine want to smile at her. So he did. She smiled back at him and in that moment he felt as if he'd known her before, as if they were recognizing each other instead of meeting for the first time.

“Blaine, do me a favor and show her around, ok?” Schuester said. “I've got a meeting to get to. Bureaucracy, you know how it is.”

“Sure thing.”

“Now Marley, you're in good hands. Make sure you take plenty of notes. Blaine here is great at his job. We're lucky to have him.”

Blaine demurred at the compliment like he was supposed to but felt no real pleasure at the comment. It sank into the pit of his stomach where it remained and grew uneasy.

After Schuester left, Blaine and Marley stood in awkward silence for a moment until Marley's nervous laughter brought them out. Blaine decided then that maybe having a working partner again wouldn't be so terrible. He showed Marley to her own workstation, just behind Blaine's own, and taught her how to log in to find her day's work, how to print and operate the computer, etc. Her lack of actual rank meant she wouldn’t be trusted with full on composing yet. Not like Blaine. Her assignments would include providing backing tracks to commercials and such, and he explained all this to her. She seemed happy enough with the assessment. Her eagerness was both contagious and nostalgic.

“Have you ever used this software before?” Blaine asked.

Marley shook her head, suddenly shy again.

“Pull up the chair next to me and watch.”

*******

  


At exactly 12:15—four hours into programming—the lunch bell trilled loudly through Blaine and Marley's headphones. Beside him, Marley jumped in surprise and then laughed at her own expense. Blaine saved his work before getting up from his seat. Marley lingered behind, unsure, and he offered to escort her to the cafeteria.

The dining hall was located in the lobby, enclosed behind a soundproof wall so as not to disturb the working environment. Blaine and Marley stood before the glass doors and waited for them to part. Sound suddenly exploded from within, a dozen conversations overlapping each other. Some people were already enjoying their lunches, while others lined up before the serving stations in wait for their turn. Blaine pointed out the menu board and explained to Marley that it changed from week to week. That week it was split pea soup, a green salad and fruit cocktail for desert. He swiped his ID across the magnetic reader on the food dispenser, making sure of doing it extra slow as to show Marley how to do it, and waited for the machine to dispense the pre-packaged meal. He scanned over the crowd for a familiar face before spotting his friend Tina sitting in their usual table in the back with her friend and coworker Kurt.

“Come on,” Blaine said.

They weaved through the rows of tables all the way to the back of the dining hall where Blaine's usual group sat. Three women, two men, not including him, all wearing different colored uniforms from Blaine and Marley's own.

“What’s the story, morning glory?” Blaine said as they approached the table. “Guys this is Marley, the new girl.”

“How did you guys score a fresh body?” said a young woman with dark hair and pouty lips, eyeing Marley up and down.

“Santana, don’t call her that. It’s rude,” responded the young woman sitting next to her.

“Marley, this is Tina,” Blaine said, interrupting the fight before it could really get started, pointing to another young woman with purple streaks in her hair and a friendly smile.

“I’m Blaine’s best friend,” Tina cut in.

“She’s my best friend.” Blaine smiled indulgently at Tina, who always felt the need to remind people of her connection to Blaine. “Over there next to her is Kurt,” he continued, “They work together over in Textiles. And that’s Artie, at the end of the table. You guys will be working together, in a way. Artie puts together those promotional spots that you’ll be adding musical background to.” He introduced the remained two of their companions-- the previously squabbling pair--as Santana and Rachel, both from the Audiovisual Division.

“Welcome, Marley. How are you liking the job so far? I almost went into Music Programming, you know. But in the end I felt it wouldn't be as rewarding as Rendering. I'm the best in our Department. Although, I'm sure I would've been very good at Music Programming, too.”

“And humble, too. Rachel, stop smiling like that. You look unhinged,” Santana said. “You're scaring the fetus away.”

Blaine looked over at Marley and noticed she did indeed look overwhelmed. He patted her slightly on the back in a comforting gesture, and felt her relax a moment later. It was then Blaine noticed a group of Enforcers enter the dining hall, all in formation, and at the head was Sebastian Smythe.

Blaine and Sebastian had known each other since childhood as they were both sons of Enforcers, but Blaine didn’t feel comfortable calling them friends. Sebastian didn't call anyone 'friend.' Not really.

Sebastian noticed Blaine looking and he smiled at  Blaine from across the room,  excusing himself from the rest of his group. Soon the others in Blaine's table noticed Sebastian's coming and sat all that much straighter in their seats. The loaded teasing between Santana and Rachel came to a stop.

Sebastian's navy blue uniform was pristine, impeccable. He wore it like few others did, as if it were a second skin. As he approached the table Blaine noticed that Sebastian's uniform now boasted three red stripes, instead of the two Blaine was used to seeing. A promotion then. Sebastian was working himself up the ranks as an Enforcer rather quickly. Blaine admired his dedication, even if he couldn’t understand how Sebastian did it.

“Hi Blaine,” Sebastian said, smiling in a way that always made the back of Blaine's neck prickle.

“Hello, everyone else,” he finished, dismissively, his eyes avoiding direct contact with anyone. “How you’ve been, buddy,” he said to Blaine, “I haven’t seen you at the gym lately.”

“I’ve been busy. Tricentennial’s coming up, you know how it is.”

Sebastian hummed in agreement. “Yeah, I've been working on the logistics for the celebration myself. The security needed is unbelievable. Total nightmare.”

His eyes swept across the table, cataloging with the quick efficiency that made him so good at his job, before settling on Tina.

“Cohen-Chang, nice to see you deigned to wear the appropriate uniform today. And here I was, looking forward to writing you up, again, for the third time this month.”

“It’s too cold outside for these skirts,” Tina said in the tone of someone who's argued the same point time and time again.

“That’s what the regulation legwarmers are for. Hummel! Is that a non-regulation accessory pinned to your uniform?”

Sebastian made a show of asking, as if he were truly asking. All at once all eyes diverted to the insect-shaped brooch pinned on Kurt’s lapel. And just as soon they shifted back to their respective meals.

“What I want to know is where you got it, seeing as no self-respecting establishment would sell something so hideous. It's unlawful. Literally."

Blaine risked a glance up. Kurt’s hard stare was unwavering. _If looks could kill_. Sebastian’s condescending smile was even more terrifying because it betrayed no fear of his own, only power. It was irreverent—the smile of a man with nothing to lose. Sebastian pulled a small tablet out of the inner pocket of his jacket and tapped away.

“Sebastian cut him some slack, it’s not that big a deal,” Blaine said.

“Blaine, you know very well I can’t do that. Seditious acts have to be reported. What kind of Enforcer would I be if let that go? That’s strike two for you, Hummel.”

Sebastian and Kurt got into a staring contest and once again Sebastian smiled that terrifying smile. “I thought you of all people would know better than to indulge in seditious behavior. After what happened to your brother, I mean.”

Everyone around the table collectively gasped. Then a silence so charged and brittle nobody dared move. Even Marley, at Blaine's side, remained tense and afraid.

“Sebastian, that’s enough!” Blaine said.

Sebastian’s face flashed hard with anger and for a moment they all feared the worst but he only shook his head and sighed.

“What am I going to do with you? I’ll see you around Blaine.” He tipped an imaginary hat in Blaine’s direction and walked away, not sparing anyone else a glance.

“Well, suddenly I’m not hungry anymore,” Tina said.

At the other end of the table, someone scoffed, as if disgusted.

“If you have something to say Santana, just say it,” Blaine said.

“I'm just sitting here thinking that it must be good to be you, Blaine. Not all of us have an Enforcer panting after us like a pathetic horny dog to forgive all our trespasses,” Santana said.

"Santana don't," Kurt said with a sigh.

"No, I'm serious. Everybody knows you're a weirdo, Anderson. And he never writes you up. Meanwhile the rest of us can't even breathe wrong when you're around because Smythe freaking stalks you."

Blaine shrugged, feigning nonchalance.

“And yet you keep hanging around me. I guess that’s why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit," Blaine said, refusing to show Santana how much her comments wounded him. It was an old story, going back to his childhood.

“Who talks like you?”

  


***

 

The afternoon dragged on in a series of beeps and bloops, sound effects and delays, until he couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to add the lyrics to the track. So who would it be today? Susie with her squeaky voice, or the more grown up Suzzane? It’d been his idea to give names to the voices. No one else did it, to his knowledge. They were generally identified by a number. V1, V2, V3. But he found that naming them usually helped him connect to the work better, made the work less tedious. More human. The fact that they were all in a way named after Mother Sue was his own little private joke.

In the end he opted for using both Susie and Suzzane. In his head, Susie was 17. She was energetic. He pictured her in pigtails, for some reason. Suzzanne was deep and genderless. Menacing even. Not unlike the real Mother Sue, he supposed. For this song, he'd use Susie's shrill and upbeat vocals for the verses, overlapped to simulate a crowd. Then he'd come in with Suzzane's deep genderless drone to bring in the refrain. He thought the contrast of their voices would be effective in creating the atmosphere the track should have.

He opened the voice rendering software and typed out the opening lyrics into the text box:

 

> _“We came down from the north_
> 
> _Blue hands and a torch_
> 
> _Red wine and food for free_
> 
> _A possibility_
> 
> _We share our mother's health_
> 
> _It is what we've been dealt_
> 
> _What's in it for me_
> 
> _Fine, then, I'll agree”_

 

He layered the voice profile on top of the text and then messed with the timestamps and pitch levels, trying to emulate the sound of a real human voice. This part was always tricky. Their equipment was advanced but it could never make the voices sound like they came from an actual human being. After all that time working behind the desk, Blaine was beginning to understand they were not supposed to. A human voice would come too close to sounding like the work of an individual.

“It doesn’t sound right.”

Blaine shook himself out of his work-induced stupor and lowered one side of his headphones.

“Did you say something?” Blaine asked Marley.

She flushed and shook her head.

“Oh, no I was just thinking out loud.”

“If there’s a problem you can tell me.”

He did his best to sound and look encouraging, but she seemed to hesitate for a moment anyway. Something in his face must have shown her she could trust him, though.

“I’m just not sure I’m doing this right. Could you give it a listen? I’m punching all the right buttons according to the programming sheet but I can’t help but feel there’s something I’m missing.”

“That never really goes away, but you get used to it.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re doing fine, Marley.”

With a big sigh and a nod Marley turned back to her work.

Blaine stared at the back of Marley’s back for a moment before going back to his own duties. From the headphones, Suzanne’s artificial voice droned on “Say you like it, say you need it, when you don’t”, over and over in that hypnotic tone until Blaine felt his eyelids start to droop.

 

* * *

 

**2.**

  


Blaine stepped out of S Tower at precisely 5:35 in the evening and immediately flipped the collar of his coat up and blew on his hands. It was still miserable outside and only likely to get worse. As he walked the two blocks east down to wait for the tram he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He drew it out and swiped through to read the message:

 

**“Don’t forget dinner tonight. Love, Mom.”**

 

As if he could. Every third Thursday of the month without fail they would all meet for dinner; him, his parents and his older brother, Cooper. Each month it was harder and harder to pretend at these family dinners. Ever since he took the job at Programming, Blaine had been feeling like a stranger in his own home, like his parents looked at him and saw someone else entirely.

The City was always busiest at this hour. Commuters going back home. Teenagers just out of the Institute milling about, unwilling to go home just yet, not before popping by the store for that one thing they just needed. It was difficult, in any case, to think of The City as calm or unhurried. There was always movement: from the buses, to the trams to the gargantuan screens projected on the sides of buildings. And the noise. There was always something blaring from the outdoor speaker system.

Blaine looked up at the marquee of the tram shelter.  _Orange Line Eastbound Tram ETA: 7 minutes_. He blew on his hands again, willing the time to pass by faster, if only to escape the cold.

“Hi,” a voice said, somewhere on Blaine's right.

“Oh hey, Kurt.”

“Hi,” Kurt breathed out again, “I don’t usually see you here."

“It’s not my route. I live on the other side of town,” Blaine said, pointing a thumb in the opposite direction. “I’m having dinner with my parents tonight.”

“Cool,” Kurt said.

Blaine looked at the marquee again. _ETA in 5 minutes_. Blaine realized then that despite having lunch together almost every day, he and Kurt had never been alone with each other. Blaine looked at his phone again, for a moment, but nothing new had come through. He looked at Kurt from the corner of his eye and noticed Kurt was looking at his phone too. Blaine bit back a smile at this. Suddenly, Kurt looked up again, a determined look on his face.

“Listen, I just wanted to say thank you for sticking up for me at lunch the other day.”

“Don’t mention it. It was the right thing to do. And don’t sweat Sebastian too much, ok? He’s all bark and no bite.”

Kurt laughed, dry and disbelieving.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I guess you know him better.”

“Fair enough,” Blaine said, huffing a laugh of his own. Kurt opened his mouth as if to say something else but was interrupted by the mechanical hum of the approaching tram. Kurt looked over his shoulder and then gestured to the tram with a thumb, as if to say “this is me.” Blaine nodded in understanding.

“I guess I'll see you later, Blaine.”

Blaine waved him goodbye and Kurt moved to stand in the queue.

“Hey, Kurt?” Blaine called out and Kurt turned to look at him from over his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I like your brooch. It suits you.”

Kurt rewarded him with a shy but delighted smile and then disappeared into the crowd piling into the tram. As the tram pulled away it revealed the poster on the opposite building, where the knowing blue eyes of The Face found Blaine's own.

 

…

 

“Mama, I’m home,” Blaine called out into his parent's house, closing the door behind himself. He followed the noise of the telescreen down the hall, past the dining room and into the living room, where his father sat in front of a bright display that covered the entire wall.

"Wow," he said.

“You like it? We just upgraded.”

Blaine felt that was an understatement. The screen was massive. Grotesque even.

“Looks... nice. What happened to the old one?”

“We put it in your old room. Your mother wants to turn it into a workout space. With the new fitness programming she doesn't have to go to the gym anymore. That's just great, don't you think? We can do it right here. We don't even have to get dressed if we don't feel like it.”

Blaine's dad laughed and Blaine joined him because he knew it was the expected action. But an uneasy feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. His father hadn't lifted his eyes from the screen once. He was transfixed. Blaine looked at the screen more closely, and to his dismay he realized his father was watching a Suetopia Global promotional spot that Blaine himself had programmed.

_"We sit alone and watch your light/ Our only friend, through teenage nights/ And everything we want to get/ We download from the internet."_

"Where's Cooper?" he said.

“What was that?”

“Cooper, dad, where is he?”

"Right behind you, little brother.” A voice said from somewhere over Blaine's right side, and then a strong arm draped itself across Blaine's shoulders. “You called?”

“Just asking if you were here yet. I'm hungry, I didn't feel like waiting around for your self-important ass.”

Cooper gasped dramatically, prompting Blaine to roll his eyes.

“You wound me. And by the by, you look terrible. Are you sleeping okay?”

“As okay as usual, I guess.”

“Well, you're looking rough. You have bags that could carry your groceries. There are pills for that. You should look into them. I mean, look at mine." Cooper pointed to his eyes and got into Blaine’s personal space.

“You don't have any,” Blaine said, all the while hating himself for falling into Cooper's game.

“Exactly. There is no reason to be unhappy in this day and age, Blaine. You'd do well to remember that.”

Just then Blaine's mother called them from the kitchen to dinner, saving him from having to respond.

**…**

  


“I finished a toothpaste commercial today," said Cooper around a mouthful chicken. "I think I did a great job on the lighting. My best work yet. It looked so real I could see pores on the skin.”

“Don’t you ever wish it was someone real on those commercials? Or you?” Blaine asked. His family stopped eating immediately, a hush settling over the table.

“Why would I do that?” Cooper asked.

“I don’t know. I just wonder if you've ever thought about it.”

“No, I haven’t. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Cooper, stop it. There’s nothing wrong with your brother,” Mrs. Anderson said in the tone of someone who has tried to convince themselves of something they know not to be true. “He’s a perfectly normal young man.”

Normal. The dreaded word. The word had followed Blaine around like a curse ever since he was a small child. Blaine had always been different. Never interested in all the things that caught the attention of his peers. Screens didn't hold his interest, he preferred instead to work with his hands, a fact that had baffled and worried his teachers. When he was a young boy he'd developed the strange habit of flexing his hands at his sides, as if there was something they missed. His mother could never figure it out, but she did try her hardest to break him out of the habit.

From an overheard conversation between Blaine's mom and the counselor at the Institute, Blaine knew he started making odd noises when he was short of a year old. They were not quite the nonsensical babbles of a baby. There was a rhythm to them, a rhyme, maybe. He wouldn't go on for very long. Blaine always stopped himself by laughing, seemingly delighted by the sound of his own voice. They sounded like…. well, something Blaine’s mother didn’t have a word for. Or so she'd said.

The replicator always made him cry, no matter what song his mom downloaded on to it. Cooper used to love it. But Blaine always covered his ears, as if hurt. That he could remember, clearly. When he gained speech the strange combination of noises didn't stop. If anything the became more defined, almost like they were taking shape. Like Blaine was trying to build something with them. When he was seven years old, Blaine remembered pouring pebbles into a jar and shaking it around rhythmically. He'd liked the way it sounded. When his mother found his makeshift toy, she'd thrown it away at once, and told Blaine that he was never to do anything like that again. It took a long time for Blaine to figure out why what'd he'd done was so wrong.

Blaine was only eight when Cooper went in for his aptitude test. Everybody expected him to wind up in Enforcement, like their father, and grandfather before them, but to everyone's surprise Cooper was placed in Artistic Propaganda, with a recommendation to pursue Rendering. Their father had been severely disappointed but soon understood that it was the best place for Cooper, a place where he could thrive. Working in Propaganda was still an honorable Party job. In a way, you were responsible for manufacturing truth, for curating the zeitgeist. And if you managed to prove yourself worthy, you’d get to speak for Mother Sue herself.

Then ten years later it'd been Blaine's turn at the test, and when the they placed him with the Enforcers, Blaine felt like his parents had breathed a sigh of relief and things were good, for a while. But a year later he came home one day and told them all they'd made a mistake and he was being transferred.

“Anyway,” Cooper said, drawing out the vowels, bringing Blaine out of his reverie. “Guess who was put in charge of conceptualizing the Official Montage for the opening ceremony of the Tricentennial Celebration?”

Blaine's mother squealed in delight. Mr. Anderson let out a loud, proud laugh. Even Blaine was happy for his brother. He knew what this would mean to Cooper, and his career. Blaine and Cooper were ranked at the same level, despite the fact that Cooper had worked for the Party for over 14 years, and Blaine only four.

“I'm glad for you Coop.”

“Thanks, Blainey. How about you then?”

“Oh, no word yet. You know how Schuester is, he's always leaving things to the last minute.”

Cooper winced in sympathy.

“Is that why you haven't been sleeping? Don't worry about it too much, I'm sure you'll get something.”

“Yeah,” Blaine whispered, feeling lonelier than he'd felt in a long time.

A lawful son working in propaganda was an honor, but an unpredictable one was a threat. Being around his family always made Blaine feel like they were all waiting for the moment when he would snap and shame them all. Somedays, Blaine felt he waited for that moment, too.

* * *

  
  


**3.**

  


_“Rise and shine sloppy babies, this is your Mother speaking. Our third Tricentennial celebration is rapidly approaching. This great land of Suetopia approaches the ripe young age of 300. Three hundred years free of ugliness, free of bad choices and incompetence. They told me, Sue, you can’t do it, but I did. Because I am a champion who can whip anything into shape, even a coven of tardy, narcissistic bloated bags of cellulite, like your ancestors were. I saved you from the clutches of uncertainty and gave you everything you ever wanted. Celebrate by downloading that one thing you’d been holding out on. But do I need it, mother? Yes, you do. You know why? Because I said so. Nothing matters more to me than the happiness of my children. And remember kids, Mother knows best.”_

  


**…**

 

It was a bright cold morning in April, and the clocks were striking ten to 8:00. Blaine, his chin nuzzled into his chest in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Suetopia Tower. He stopped in the foyer, before the portrait of Mother Sue, their omnipresent watchman. He hesitated for a second and then, instead of going his usual way, he walked toward the elevators that would take him to the South Tower. It was an impulsive decision. No logic or reason behind it. Just impetus.

He knew he couldn't tap his ID into the reader, otherwise he'd make it very easy for the Enforcers to find out he'd been somewhere he wasn't supposed to, so he sneaked into the elevator with a crowd of others, and then walked out with a group of people headed for Budgeting. Their uniform was of a slightly deeper red than Blaine's, making it easy for him to blend in.

He hid in an alcove and waited for them to cross the threshold of their division before continuing down the corridor. That part of the building was eerily silent. There was none of the habitual noise of employees behind the glass doors. Still, Blaine walked on, uncertain of what he was even looking for but knowing he'd figure it out once he saw it. Until he came by an office unlike any other. For one thing it had no sliding glass doors, but a thick wooden door with a handle and a small window.

Blaine peeked inside and was intrigued further. The space was filled with industrial looking shelves, and these shelves were filled with identical tomes. There was only one computer, instead of a whole wall of them. It was dark inside, or less bright than the glare of a wall-full of monitors and white floors created. Blaine turned the handle, surprised that it even let him, and walked into the office, propelled by curiosity, or perhaps something larger: predestination. He looked around but the place felt empty, still he felt eyes on him.

"Hello there," a voice called from behind him and Blaine jumped, startled.

“Can I help you with something?”

It was a woman, Blaine saw. An older woman, probably around his grandmother’s age. Except she didn’t look like a grandmother. There was nothing matronly about her; she appeared, in fact, quite regal and timeless.

“I’m not sure," Blaine said.

“You're not sure?” The mystery woman smiled in amusement. Her voice was low and raspy, like that of a smoker's. “Well, what brings you to the Records Office?”

“Is that what this is? I don’t know. I just decided to take a different elevator today, to see what happened. And now here I am.”

The woman only raised an eyebrow and looked at Blaine as if he were a question she needed to find an answer to.

“Well aren't you a curious fella. What’s your name?”

“Blaine Anderson. I’m in Music Programming?”

This seemed to get her interest and she perked up at the mention.

“Such a strange thing that which _they_ call music, don’t you think?”

Blaine felt confused. Even though she’d phrased it as a question, Blaine could tell she expected no answer from him. The woman came closer and when she was only a few inches from where Blaine stood, she spoke again, her voice wistful, as if she were reading a bedtime story.

“A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.”

Blaine froze right on the spot. He’d heard those words before, once, in a half-remembered dream. The dreams had always been his, something that belonged to the privacy of his inner self. Untouched by the world outside. And as much as he'd sought explanation for them, he was not ready for this collision of worlds. He was suddenly uneasy. Who was this woman?

“I, uh, I better head to my department. Or else I’ll be late.”

“You do that, Blaine Anderson.”

With that he left the office and went back the way he came. The encounter stayed with him all day as he punched in the buttons on his work console. It was only much later that he realized he didn’t know the woman’s name.

  


* * *

 

He was standing in a pool of light. A beam so bright it blinded. He was not himself, and yet he it was his consciousness staring out at a sea of black, when from the darkness people emerged. Hundreds. No. Thousands. Then a roar, uniform yet multitudinous, like a rush of water, awesome and overwhelming. Vibrations so powerful he could still feel them pulsing in time to the rush of his blood, searing like lightning. Then he opened his mouth and words came out, saying...

 

_“Rise and shine, ladies and gays, this is your Mother speaking.”_

 

Blaine Anderson woke with the sun.

  
  


* * *

 

**4.**

  


It was an overcast cool morning in May, and the clocks were striking ten to 8:00. Blaine, his chin nuzzled into his chest in an effort to escape the damp fog, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Suetopia Tower. This time he didn’t stop in the foyer to waver but instead headed straight to elevators to the South Tower. He tried to act natural, as if he took this path everyday. The were cameras in the elevators that could dispute this, of course, but the Enforcers would only notice his presence in the wrong one if Blaine drew their attention. So he wouldn't.

This time he knew where he was going and so he headed directly toward the Records Office, sneaking past the same group of people from Budgeting.

“Hello? Anyone in here?” he called out into the seemingly empty office. For a second he thought no one would come, but a moment later the mystery lady from before came out from behind one of the shelves.

“Well, look who it is, Mr. Music Programming. How can I help you?”

“The last time I was here you said something, about the music that used to make you smile. Where did you hear that?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I thought I'd heard it before, but I can't remember where. I thought maybe you knew where it came from."

The woman stared at him for a long while, her gaze hesitant and calculating.

“And you came all the way up here for that. What did you say your name was again?"

“Blaine Anderson.”

"Well, Blaine Anderson, why do you want to know so bad?"

"I don't know," Blaine said. He didn't know a lot of things. It was the most honest statement he'd made in a long time.

“You don't need me to tell you anything. The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Blaine said, fed up with the woman's riddles and avoidances.

“You let me know when you figure it out."

Blaine didn't go back to Records after that.

* * *

  


**5.**

  


Blaine had tried to forget about the odd encounter with the woman in Records, tried to concentrate on the job he was supposed to be doing, but her riddles and word games looped around in his mind's eye, waylaying his focus. The truth was that Blaine had never met anyone like her, who simultaneously managed to be mysterious while doling out unflinching honesty. The people around him were always honest because they held no secrets, but this woman give him the truth like a tribute, something chosen and not inevitable.

It made Blaine feel emboldened, less lonely, and yet farther away from everyone around him.

He was the only one in the lab that afternoon. Director Schuester had taken Marley into his private office for further training. He knew they'd linger there for hours yet. And should they come back earlier, Blaine would see them coming with plenty of time. It was the perfect moment. Blaine knew it could take weeks or even months before circumstances aligned themselves so perfectly again. And a feeling deep inside told him he had to do it now. Or else he would never.

He did then what he hadn't done a long time: he tried to imagine what the song would sound like when it was finished, what feeling it would leave him with. And then allowed himself to contemplate changes, creative freedom. But the words that the printer had spat out were vapid and unfeeling. They would not do.

Blaine looked at the programming sheet in front of him, at the combination of numbers and letters that would become a song. Headphones on, he tested out every sound of the key, separately. Then he tried out a few combinations. Played them over and over until they became part of his environment, until he could describe their particular reverberation with minute detail. He began then with the artificial _chask_ of the drum machine. He thought that if a computer could clap, it would sound like that. In fact, that's exactly what it was, a computer trying to clap. It would not do.

He closed his eyes then and recalled his dreams—the scope, the echo, the phantom feeling of reaching out toward something, until the sharp and curt chask became a deep, reverberating _drummm, drummmm, drummm_. He tweaked the control, slowed the tempo, making the sounds deeper, broader, until the echo transported him and filled him with absolute peace. And then he added twinkles, like water falling in a cave. And finally he tied it all together with a yawning plucky sound, like the snap of a rubber band, if it were being heard underwater.

And there it was, the song of his heart. His song of longing.

He was not supposed to take the programming logs out of the department but there was no way he could complete the second part of his plan in the middle of the lab, so he waited until the camera had made its sweep around the room and stuffed the log into his pants pocket. He took his lunch break off building and told no one where he was going.

He went to a place he knew there was no surveillance: a construction site beside a loading dock down by the bay. His other best friend Sam worked down there as a contractor. As he ate a cold sandwich, Blaine rearranged the words on the page, using the ball-point ink pen he'd taken to carrying around for the past few weeks. It was harder than he anticipated, as he didn't have much to work with. If he was to do this he had to be careful not to use anything that wasn't already there, nothing that couldn’t be explained away by a coding error. But he persevered until it was ready.

After lunch he went back to work and punched in the wrong lyrics. Or the right ones, depending on how you wanted to look at it. He didn’t give himself time to second guess and sent the file without another thought. Encoded, ready to debut on Friday’s broadcast and then sold to the millions of followers in Suetopia. Then he calmly stood from his workspace, walked toward the shredder and destroyed the programming log.

For a second the blood beneath his skin ran cold and he felt as if he couldn't breathe. But only for a second, before a feeling of utter rightness settled over him.

  


**...**

 

Friday May 7th, 2315 at exactly 7:27 in the evening Radio GaGa, Suetopia's only musical radio station, played the song titled 'Heartbeats' to an audience of millions. They were not sure what they had listened to, other than it was not exactly was they were used to. In a fifth floor apartment a woman paused in the middle of cooking dinner to simply listen. A crowd ceased their merrymaking and gathered beneath the massive speakers in Union Square, enraptured. Across town, a woman riding the tram home cried for no reason. Tina and Rachel capped their nail-polish bottles and turned up the volume. Kurt placed a hand to his own heart and found it beat to the same rhythm of the song.

By Saturday morning 'Heartbeats' had broken every sales record in the history of Suetopia.

Nobody knew that was not the song they were supposed to hear. Except Blaine Anderson.

  


**…**

 

It was an overcast cool morning in May, and the clocks were striking ten to 8:00. Blaine, his chin nuzzled into his chest in an effort to escape the damp fog, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Suetopia Tower. He'd spent the entire weekend jumping at shadows, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But no one came banging at his apartment door. So that morning he boarded the elevator to the North Tower and tried to make himself as invisible as possible.

When the doors opened on the 27th floor Blaine came face to face with the woman from Records. The elevator doors closed behind him, but Blaine remained rooted to the spot, rendered immobile by his own fear. Nothing was heard but the stutter of his breath.

The woman turned shrewd eyes on Blaine, cautious and always calculating, and said, “ _Now, for ten years we've been on our own, and moss grows fat on a rolling stone..._ ”

“ _But that's not how it used to be when the jester sang for the king and queen_ ,” Blaine finished, the words coming to him from a place just out of conscious reach.

A knowing smile tugged at the corners of the woman's mouth. “I take my lunch break at 12:30,” the woman said. “Understand?”

Blaine nodded, feeling the tension slowly leave his body, even if the woman had left him with even more questions than before.

  


**…**

  


He spent the morning looking over his shoulder, jumpy, even though he knew he shouldn't be. He shouldn't do anything that would attract attention to himself or make people think there was something other than ordinary about him. Schuester was away on business for a few days still, and Blaine thought he could trust Marley enough to relax, still his muscles would not uncoil, the knot at the base of his throat would not loosen.

"I heard your song on the Friday countdown," Marley said.

"What song?" Blaine said, and made sure he didn't look at her when he spoke.

"The new one. 'Heartbeats.' You programmed it, right? I could tell. I mean, I know we're not supposed to know who exactly punches the buttons, but I knew. It sounded like you."

Blaine frowned and Marley, blushed, clearly flustered. "I mean, I'm not trying to imply anything. I know you wouldn’t—It just reminded me of you is all. That's what I meant."

Blaine gave her a tiny smile because he didn't know what to say. He didn't have anything in him that wouldn't give the game away. But still... he wondered whether it would be so bad if he told her about what he'd done. She was right. The song did sound like him. It was his. And it killed him that nobody knew.

“How have you been adjusting? I know all this can be overwhelming.”

“I don’t know. Is it weird if I say it’s not what I expected?”

“How so?”

Marley looked around the room, vacillating. Blaine rolled his desk chair closer to hers and took one of her hands between his own.

“Whatever you say, it stays between us, ok?”

“I've dreamed about working here my whole life. All I ever wanted was to make music. And now that I’m here I just feel hollow. I'm not doing anything, I'm just pushing buttons.”

Her grey eyes filled with tears and Blaine made a decision.

“I know how you feel. I had dreams, too. Still have them. You hear them too, don’t you? The words that aren’t really your own.”

Marley nodded once, meekly.

“And sometimes, I dream that I’m a bird,” she said.

He nodded along, understanding all the words Marley wouldn't allow herself to voice. Freedom. Marley dreamed of freedom.

“And I’m flying but they catch me, and they bring me before Mother Sue. She keeps asking me how I did it, but I can’t tell her. I don’t know how.” Marley’s mouth quivered with the terror anew, as if she were facing the same scenario now.

“I have something to show you,” Blaine said.

But then they heard the whoosh of the department door and the mechanical voice saying ' _welcome Schuester, William_.' As the footsteps got closer and closer, they sprang apart and Marley hurried to dry her face. Blaine's heart pounded strong and loud beneath his chest.

“Director Schuester,” he said. “I thought you weren't due back from your trip until Wednesday.”

“Something came up. I trust everything was in order while I was gone. Marley?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“I'm having coffee sent up. Do either of you want any?”

They shook their heads.

“Blaine, I want to see you in my office in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, get back to work, guys.”

Blaine turned back around to face his workstation, as if on autopilot. The printer beside him spat out the programming sheet of the day, but to Blaine it all looked like gibberish; nonsensical and foreign. He slipped the headphones over his head and turned the sound up loud, trying to shatter the fragile silence of his own anxiety.

 

**...**

 

“You wanted to see me?” Blaine said as he entered Director Schuester's office, twenty minutes after the man summoned him. Blaine sat down in the appointed seat and waited for the other man to speak.

“I was going over your weeklies last night. ” Schuester leaned forward and pressed a button on the keyboard in front of him, and a familiar song came over the speakers. It was Blaine's own composition.

“This wasn’t what was printed on your programming sheet,” Schuester said.

Blaine remained silent. He knew he’d been in the wrong but he couldn't risk saying the wrong thing and incriminating himself. Every word that came out of his mouth now would have to be measured. He had to know how Schuester was feeling before risking anything.

“Sir?” he said.

“Did you or did you not alter what was on the programming sheet?”

“Of course not. That would be seditious.”

“Yes, it would. But this is not what our songs sound like.”

“Perhaps it was a glitch in the machine. We should call it in, get it checked out.”

“Our machines don’t glitch, Blaine.”

“They did once.”

A dark look came across Schuester's face, fleeting. Blaine only noticed it because he’d been aiming for it.

“That was a long time ago.”

They stared at each other for a long while, Blaine sweating underneath his uniform, until Schuester relented. All the while Blaine's song still filled the room.

“I’m not scolding you, Blaine. I’m only worried. And you've been paying visits to Records?”

“Who told you that?”

And Blaine thought he'd been so careful. He should've known better.

“Come on, Blaine, you know we know these things. You’re young and sociable, you want people to like you. And you can’t see the ways in which people can be dangerous because you want to see the best in people. I admire that, Blaine. But that woman is not the person you want to be seen with. She’s got a reputation. Reputations get you noticed. And we both know what happens when the Enforcers take notice of you. I don’t want that for you. You’re really good at your job, maybe too good,” Schuester chuckled and Blaine refrained from asking what that remark was supposed to mean.

“I remember what it was like for me when I was your age and working your job. It’s not without its frustrations. We’re curious guys, you and I. I know what it’s like, you see that big console with all those controls and you think to yourself, I wonder what would happen if I tweaked that one. The danger is that it never really ends there, does it. If that was all there was to it, then we wouldn’t be here right now. It’s never just a button, Blaine. Just because you’re free to say and do anything you want, doesn’t always mean you should. I’m on your side here. I want to help you. But you have to give me something. I’m going to ask again. Did you alter the programming?”

Blaine stared at his director for a long time. Sometimes the right answer and the true answer were two completely different things. Blaine had always been taught to do the right thing. But what happened when the right thing and the true thing didn’t align?

It occurred to Blaine then that Schuester didn’t have the power. Blaine did. The world began with a no, because a woman had dared to say no. That was the most precious thing of all. For all the cameras and surveillance and Enforcers taking notice, no one could look inside his mind, no one could take away what made Blaine himself.

His name was Blaine Devon Anderson. He was twenty-two years old. He deliberately committed an act of sedition for no reason other than he wanted to. No one could take that away from him.

Schuester’s question hung in the air between them. It should’ve been a tense moment, but all the tension had left Blaine’s body and was replaced with a lightness that felt a lot like relief.

“No, Director Schuester. I didn’t.”

Blaine couldn’t tell whether Schuester had believed his lie or not, but it didn’t scare him. Schuester tilted his chair back, his mouth twisted in a strange smile.

“Well, that’s very good to hear, because I have an important job for you. The Tricentennial celebrations are next month, as you know. I’m entrusting you with the official song. Can you handle that?”

He’d disguised it as a promotion, but Blaine knew it really was a test. A test he could not afford to fail. And yet… And yet the thought of having to go back to the old methods, after he’d experienced the exhilaration of creation didn’t bear thinking about.

“Yes, of course. It’d be an honor. Sir.”

“You’ll do great, son. And listen,” Schuester leaned into Blaine’s personal space. “Don’t sweat this little incident too much, okay? Kids love the song. They’ve been downloading it like crazy. At the end of the day, that’s the important thing, right? You’re free to go, Blaine,” he said.

And Blaine thought, _yes. Yes I am_.

* * *

 

**6.**

 

Come lunch time Blaine found the woman from Records waiting for him at the entrance to the mess hall. She made eye contact with him and gestured slightly over her shoulder, pointing out the direction of a table. He acknowledged the gesture with a nod of his own and followed Marley to line up for food at the nearest dispenser.

“You go on ahead,” he said to Marley after they both had their lunch. “I'm meeting someone else for lunch today. It's work related,” he added, somewhat hastily.

"Umm, okay," Marley said and then walked off in the direction of their usual table.

Blaine finished collecting his silverware and drink and then walked off in the direction the woman had gone. It didn't escape his notice that it was as far away from his usual spot as it could be. He sat down across from her and fidgeted in his seat.

"Hello," he said, after the silence became too uncomfortable.

“The song,” she said, without preamble. “Was it you?”

Blaine's first instinct was to pretend he didn't know what she was talking about. But he remembered how he'd felt about the woman, like she gave truth as a tribute. A choice. Then he made one.

"Yes."

The woman let out breath like a relief. And then she laughed. Blaine still didn't know her name. So he asked.

“June. Dolloway,” she answered, and became serious once more. “I have something to show you. The kind of thing they don't want me to show you. Understand?”

Blaine looked around the room, caught Sebastian staring at him from across the room, and he sent a prayer of thanks June had her back to him. No way to read her lips. He turned back to June, who awaited his response.

“Yes.”

“17th and Cheer. At 9:00 sharp. No later, or we'll meet the patrol rounds. Got it?”

Blaine nodded. He got it.

 

**…**

  


Blaine was at the corner of 17th and Cheer at exactly 8:55 in the evening, dressed all in black because he thought people going on secret missions should dress in black. At least that was what movies had taught him. Soon enough he heard a rumble come from the darkness. He looked out into the street and saw a lone headlight, growing in size as it got closer. From the void June appeared, riding a motor scooter that had seen better days. It was an incongruous sight. Anachronistic, even. A regal woman straddling a motorbike older than herself. On second thought, it fit perfectly. She handed him a spare helmet and Blaine jumped on the scooter behind her. He thought they must have made quite a sight driving down Cheer Street.

He noticed June avoided the populated streets and instead made all sorts of complicated twists and turns through alleyways and backstreets, all in the effort to circumvent the omniscient surveillance of the Enforcers. The farther they got from The City, the darker it got. The advertising screens reduced to blocks of light far off in the distance.

By the time they pulled up to an old dilapidated building in a deserted part of town he had never even seen before, Blaine had lost complete track of time and place. But still June wasn't done. She hid her scooter inside a metal dumpster. It was the big kind that had a small gate.

“Isn't this part of town restricted?” he asked.

“That's what you're worried about right now, seriously? You crack me up, kid.”

She asked him to help her pry open a heavy metal door on the side of the decrepit building. With a hefty pull, the door creaked open. The inside of the building was encased in total darkness. Blaine strained his eyes but couldn't make anything from the shadows. The smell was overwhelming, though. It was earthy and dusty. Organic. June led them into its depths, illuminated by the light of a pocket flashlight. She stopped in front of some type of electrical box, from what Blaine could gather. She flipped a few switches and the lights came on, one by one, slowly flooding the room with light.

Blaine had no words for what he was seeing, mostly because he'd never seen any of what surrounded him in real life. He'd definitely never been anywhere quite like this before. There was heavy, colorful fabric draped across the walls. And shelves stacked with books. Real paper books! Posters and other static pictures not made from lights and pixels. Statues, canes, bodiless heads stacked on wooden tables, shoes, wigs and other things he had no name for. He touched a hand to one of the pictures on the wall and was surprised to find they were made from paper.

“Welcome to the theater,” June said, gesturing to the room at large, “to the magic, to the fun. Where painted trees and flowers grow, and laughter rings fortissimo. And treachery’s neatly done. Now you’ve entered the asylum, this profession unique. Actors are children playing hide-and-go-seek.”

Blaine laughed with the unrestrained delight of a child.

“Welcome to Broadway, Blaine.”

“Where did you get all this stuff?”

“Here and there. I work in the Records office. I know where they keep everything.”

“You stole it?”

“I rescued it, kid. Art is not something that can belong to one person.”

“And you live here?”

“It’s my home, yes. But no, I don’t live here. An empty government issued apartment draws too much attention. But I have my ways of sneaking around.” She winked at him.

“It's your home now too, Blaine.”

 

**...**

 

They talked for hours, down there in the musty rooms of June’s hideout, surrounded by the damp smell of old paper and cloth. Blaine had never felt so at home and it seemed like his marvel would never dampen. Every new trinket June unearthed, however trifle, filled Blaine with an inexplicable joy, like the ever confusing pieces of his present were finally aligning together.

“So everything here is centuries old. Why do you surround yourself so much with what is past?”

“Because it is only the past which gives us hope.”

“But if you've read the secret histories, they you've learned that there is no hope. Today is all we have.”

“There is always hope!”

“Where is it?” Blaine said, not expecting an answer.

“Any way the wind blows.”

“Or blowing in the wind, right?” he said, remembering one of their earlier meetings.

He was looking through an odd looking leaflet with the words PLAYBILL on the cover when June spoke from across the shelves.

“Tell me Blaine, do you dream?”

A seemingly insignificant non-sequitur, but not to Blaine.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

June continued to stare, her gaze unrelenting in its desire to convey something Blaine could only guess at. And after a beat of consideration, Blaine threw caution to the wind.

“Yes,” he whispered, voice shaky—the confession both terrifying and unburdening. “It’s always the same,” he said. “I can’t ever remember specifics, but it's always the same feeling.” A vibration so powerful that after waking he could still feel it pulsing in time to the rush of his blood, searing like lightning. “I see a big, wide space. And people--people everywhere. And noise-- huge, huge noise-- screeching, banging. And then come the words. So many of them. And I don’t know what they mean.”

He looked up and the tenderness and hope coming from June nearly undid him.

“I feel unmoored,” he continued. “Like there is a truth that I forgot and I’m desperate to remember. Is that crazy?”

June let her tears fall and Blaine cried with her.

“No, Blaine. It’s not. I have waited for you for so long. Come, I have something else to show you.”

She led him down a narrow spiral staircase into a cavernous pit of black. The place looked like a skeleton, dead wires hanging from the ceiling, fractured beams, blind light fixtures. He came to stand behind a musty thick curtain, water-stained and frayed at the bottom. He thought it was once red, but over time it had faded to a vaguely pinkish brown. He looked back at June and she nodded encouragingly. Blaine parted the curtain and in front of him a wide open space gaped. Empty seats like ghosts haunting him. From behind him, a noise, and then, a swath of white light cut across his vision and he was encircled by bright light. For a moment he felt he couldn’t breathe and he pinched himself just to confirm he wasn’t dreaming.

“What is this place?” he choked out. “I don’t understand.”

“Follow me. I'm not done yet.”

She led him across the floor to the opposite side of where he’d come from, their shoes clapping against the wooden surface. It was dark but the spotlight illuminated the pathway enough for them to walk without incident. She took the coverings off of something and dust lifted and settled in the air.

“Do you know what this is?"

He did. It was a piano, although he didn’t have the word for it then. But he’d seen one before, in the unreal landscape of his dreams. It was dusty and battered, the edges chipped, but its silhouette was unmistakable; the sensuous curve of the lid, the straight row of yellowed teeth. Blaine brought his pointer finger down, but retreated before actually touching one of the keys.

“Does it work?” he asked.

June shook her head.

“This one’s been gutted.” She lifted the lid to show him the piano wire, which was in fact frayed cut across the middle.

Blaine approached the bench with trepidation, half sick with anticipation. He lowered himself onto the wooden surface, and as his thighs hit the seat he felt his body align, like pieces of a puzzle. Or muscle memory. He took a deep breath, filled his lungs with musty air and as his ribcage expanded a sense of peace came over him. His hands twitched at his side, suddenly eager, like they used to do when he was a little boy. Blaine paused for a second and pulled on the thread of fantastical memory, willing himself to remember, _Blaine, remember_. His fingers hit the piano keys, coming down in configuration, positioned naturally over the ivory as if they did it everyday. They didn’t reverberate, as Blaine knew they wouldn't but he heard them anyway, in the chamber of his recollection. They sounded like nothing his computers had ever produced. And everything he'd ever sought. The words, when they came, they did so almost as an afterthought. As his fingers continued playing a phantom song, he opened his mouth and sang:

_"Tonight, I'm going to have myself a real good time, I feel alive.”_

He laughed then, breathless. It was true.

_“And the world is turning inside out. I'm floating around in ecstasy, so don't stop me now. 'Cause I'm having a good time...”_

When he was done, he opened his eyes and found June staring at right at him, looking like she finally had answers to all her questions. A laugh burst out of Blaine, breathless, more sob than anything else.

“I didn't know I could do that.”

“Do you know why I brought you here now?”

“Yeah. Yes, I do.”

  


**…**

 

June led Blaine back up the stairs and him Blaine to a private corner of the theater. She had a small table there with two chairs, all made of heavy wrought iron, intricately melded in a lace-like pattern. They were once white but the paint peeled off to show it rusted insides. Blaine caressed the back of the chair with careful fingers and thought they were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

The table was set for tea, with real tea cups made out of porcelain and saucers, hand-painted, or so June said. There was a mirror on the wall opposite them, with round light-bulbs over the top, all in a row. Blaine hardly recognized his reflection.

“The world wasn’t always like this, you know,” June said, pouring tea into Blaine's cup. “Or I guess I should say, it was like _this_ ,” she swept her hands up in a grand gesture, referring to the theater around them.

“What happened?”

“What always happens. Someone new comes along and makes everybody think they have The Answer.”

Blaine furrowed his brow and June immediately jumped into action, getting up to rummage through one of her shelves. “I’ve been working on this for a long time,” she said. Her back was to Blaine as she pulled out files out of a cabinet. “I reckon I was about your age when I started.”

She brought out a large book and spread it open on the table. It was full of notes. Dates. Questions.

 

                                                                                  

 

**When did the music die?**

 

“Once upon a time there was freedom of choice. You could choose what to wear, where to work, what to buy and who to buy it from. Personal property. And music, not the kind that comes from those programming sheets of yours, but music that came from the heart. You ever feel like you have something to say that you want people to hear?”

“Maybe? I don’t know.”

“Well back then, people knew, and they wrote it, and sang it and danced it.”

“What happened?” Blaine asked again.

“People handed it over, and they never even noticed. How does this government sustain itself?”

“Order?”

June shook her head.

“Control?”

“Not quite.”

Blaine thought for a second. Why did people do the things they did without ever questioning them?

“Fear.”

June nodded.

“That’s right. That's how it always starts. You create a culture of fear. You make people scared, and then you say you have the way of keeping them safe. You unleash the disease so you can then offer the cure. And before you know the whole world is bugged with microphones and cameras and your thoughts are not even your own.”

“How does music come into all this?”

June sipped at her tea, and the sat forward in her chair, invading Blaine's personal space.

“The fastest way to seize a nation is to appropriate its culture. Forget about the government, that comes later. Art, be it music, film, writing, the theater—that's where the people really live. You control popular culture, you control the people. That's how it all started, as far as I can tell, from my research. Our very own Mother started planting her own pop stars, and then next thing you know, the whole industry's hers. Then the whole world. She wasn't a tyrant, you see, she was only giving the people what they wanted. Never mind that she was the one to create the demand in the first place.”

June snapped her fingers. _Just like that._

“Why did people stand for it?”

“Why not? Freedom is a frightening concept, Blaine. Life gets a lot easier to navigate if you have someone else draw you a neat map. No responsibilities. No burden of having to decide which path to take. You don’t have to worry about going down the wrong path if there’s only one. And if it turns out to be the wrong one then...”

“The computer made a mistake.”

“Exactly. Something tells me you’d know all about that.”

“To be honest I'm still not sure how that happened. How does the algorithm make a mistake?”

“Because we are not programmable. A computer can't tell you who you are. Whatever combination of answers you gave told them you cared about doing the right thing. But it never thought to ask you what you think they right thing is. They just assume their truth is also yours.”

“When I transferred out of the Enforcement, my mother said I broke her heart, but it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish?”

“It sells for so little, integrity, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch we are free.”

Blaine let out a lone, dry laugh. “I don't feel free. Not even in my own mind. Except when I programmed that song.”

“And that is why we’re here.  It can be like it was. All the people need is a leader, that's all it takes. One young rebel, one crazy kid with a dream."

“You mean me.”

June nodded.

“I don't know anything about leading rebellions. It all sounds a little too fantastical.”

“You know more than you think.”

“The dreams. They're not really dreams, are they?”

June shook her head.

“I don't think so.”

For a frightening moment, he could see it, could see himself lead a group of like-minded people. He saw himself spread the message. He saw people get it. And then... Then what? People didn't just change overnight. June's dream was beautiful but it was just a dream.

“I don't know that I'm the person you seek. I don't know that I can change the world with a song.”

“Others before you have. But you don't have to decide anything right now. Just say you will think about it.”

“I can do that.”

* * *

  


**7.**

 

The spikes and valleys rising and falling along the length of one of Blaine's monitors blurred momentarily. Blaine brought his fists to his eyes and tried to rub the boredom out. But the banal song didn’t go anywhere, so he pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the desk. A knock on the glass pane across from his workstation interrupted his self-wallowing. Blaine looked up from his work to see Sebastian Smythe waving at him from the other side of the glass. Blaine lowered his headphones until they hung from his neck.

“Hi. What are you doing here?” he said. Sebastian was the last person Blaine expected to see.

“Hey. I was just wondering if you were heading for the gym after work tonight. I thought maybe we could spot each other.”

Blaine covertly sneaked a glance at the clock on his computer. It was five o'clock. He meant to meet June at the theater that night, right after work, and before the 7:00 PM patrol. In that split second of consideration, Blaine worried over how he could get a message to June in time if he went with Sebastian. He felt annoyed at the obligations required of him. He was so stupidly tired of quotas and sanctions, but the world didn’t stop turning just because he knew something most people didn’t. He scrambled for an excuse, but came up empty.

“I, uh, wasn’t planning on it,” he finally said.

“Come on, don’t leave me hanging. I know you’re nowhere near your quota for this quarter.”

Blaine bristled at that, felt the heat of indignation burn him from the inside and settle on his ears, which were thankfully still covered by the headphones.

“Did you _check_?”

“What? Are you afraid I might find something I shouldn't?”

For a second, Blaine felt as though someone had reached into his chest and seized his lungs in a fist. Then Sebastian laughed.

“Relax, I’m just messing around with you. So, what do you say? You wanna join me?”

Blaine couldn’t think of an excuse good enough to refuse, and he also understood that saying no would be suspicious, considering that he was woefully behind on his quota, so he agreed. Sebastian rewarded him with a beatific smile. Blaine wallowed in his disappointment, already calculating how quickly he could afford to slip out.

 

**...**

 

They exercised in tandem, working their way around the circuit of the gym for a full two hours, but Blaine could hardly concentrate on what he was doing. He was simply going through the motions. For the entire time he'd known Sebastian, he'd never know the other man to do anything for the hell of it. There was always another intention behind every word, every action. He was the kind of man that would tickle you on the side, only to draw back and punch you in the face a second later. He'd remained quiet throughout the night, though, which did nothing to temper Blaine's uneasiness. What he wanted, Blaine couldn't tell.

After their workout they showered in silence, and then dressed in regulation sweats, which proved inadequate for the cool windy night, Blaine found, as they walked the few yards between S Tower and the parking garage where Sebastian's patrol car was stowed.

Blaine looked up at the sky, squinting past the glare of the projectors and screens, trying, in vain, to make out the faint flicker of the stars.

“You ever wonder what they really look like?” he asked. “The stars,” he clarified a moment later when no answer was forthcoming. “We know they’re there because we’re told, but truth is, we can’t really see them. We just take them for granted.”

At his side, Sebastian sighed.

“Come on, I’ll drive you home,” he said, effectively killing the conversation.

The little wriggling thing in the pit of Blaine's stomach awakened. Any other time Sebastian would've made a joke about Blaine trying to flirt with him. Blaine looked at his watch. It was barely eight. Early enough to avoid the 9:00 o'clock patrol and make the convoluted detour to 72nd St if he left now. But when he looked up to make an excuse he saw Sebastian’s genial expression had faded into something that bordered on menacing. Blaine resisted the urge to step back. Sebastian had looked at him in many ways over the years-- amusement, exasperation, lust-- but he’d never looked at him like that. Blaine knew he was in no position to refuse.

“Okay,” he breathed out.

Blaine was no stranger to the inside of a patrol car. He was intimately familiar with the monitors and communication devices used to keep watch on the citizens. They made you feel like a god, except that night they only made him feel trapped, as if he were the only being spied on.

Sebastian pulled away from the parking garage and turned West on Sue's Corner, as if he were indeed driving Blaine home, but after a few minutes it was evident to Blaine that Sebastian was not driving him home after all. Blaine's building faded into the background behind them as they drove away from the hub of the city center. Still, Blaine couldn’t bring himself to say anything, rendered mute by fear. _Is this how they do it_ , he thought. Do they always send you someone you know and trust, or was Sebastian making an exception just for him?

Twenty silent minutes of driving later, Sebastian pulled over in a dark alley. He’d chosen the destination carefully, Blaine could tell. They were in an industrial part of town, where the factories sat in neat rows and surveillance was lax. Sebastian killed the engine. The sound of their breaths inside the enclosed space was deafening.

“Why did you do it? Are you out of your mind?” Sebastian asked, after a minute that felt longer than an hour.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the rebuttal was automatic and sloppy, and Blaine regretted it the second it left his mouth.

“You’re telling me you don't know why I've received orders to increase surveillance on you? Don’t play dumb with me, Blaine. You know _exactly_ what I’m talking about."

The leather of the steering wheel squealed under Sebastian's unrelenting grip.

“Look at me.”

Begrudgingly, Blaine did.

“That is a dangerous road you’re walking on and I don’t want you to start something you’re not willing to see all the way through.”

“Who said I wasn’t?”

“Blaine, I mean it. You have no idea what they do to people convicted of sedition. Don’t make me have to turn you in, _please_.” Sebastian spoke with urgency uncharacteristic of him. Sebastian Smythe never begged. In that split second of Sebastian’s vulnerability, Blaine made a choice.

“Then don’t turn me in. I’m not the one forcing your hand. Can’t you see that? This existence is wrong. You have to see that.”

“Right or wrong, it’s what we’ve been dealt. We have to play the game if we want to keep on going.”

“Say I did do it. Would I deserve the punishment that would be visited upon me?”

“Of course not.”

“Then do what you know is right, and don’t say anything. Be brave with me.”

Sebastian closed his eyes, as if in pain, and for a second, Blaine thought he had him.

“Don’t. This is my job, Blaine. You understand. You wore these stripes once. Remember?”

“They never did suit me. For the first time, ever, I feel like my life finally makes sense. I don’t want to live a lie. Everything we do, everything we are is a byproduct of programming. Just zeroes and ones, over and over. But you know what computers can’t touch? What’s in here,” he brought a palm to press atop Sebastian’s heart. “When people finally realize that, the world will be ours.”

“Who have you been talking to, Blaine? Why are you saying these things?” Sebastian implored, bring a hand up to cover Blaine's own.

“It doesn’t matter,” Blaine laughed. “I’ve woken up. I have always known it. Deep down you know it, too.”

There in Sebastian's car, Blaine finally made a decision. Sebastian, for all his posturing, wasn't strong enough to be brave. But Blaine could be brave for both of them. He could be brave for all of them.

* * *

  


**8.**

  


It was the quiet pleasures of life that mattered most, Blaine thought. Like sharing a pizza with best friends, a gorgeous vista spread out before you. Which is exactly what Blaine, Tina and Sam were doing on a Friday night where everyone else was home, huddled around the telescreen, or out in Union Square, dancing to Radio GaGa's Friday Countdown.

There was a spot by the loading docks down by the bay that surrounded The City that seemed untouched by the energy of the capital. It had been their secret meeting spot since their teenage years, when all they had to worry about was how to wheedle enough money out of mom and dad to download the latest single. Their problems had changed, as they themselves had, but the pizza and people-watching ritual didn't.

“You're going to tell us why you brought us down here?” Tina said around a bite of pizza. “We haven't been here since the Great Jeremiah Disaster of Valentine's Day.”

“A classic,” Sam said, tucking his hands under his chin and making a mooney-eyed expression, which prompted Tina to laugh.

“You guys are the worst,” Blaine said.

“You love us.”

Tina weaved an arm through one of Blaine's own and rested her head in the dip of his shoulder. Blaine kissed her hair.

“Something’s happened to me,” Blaine said. “I met someone.”

“Ooh, Blainey Days is in love. Again,” Tina mocked.

“No, it’s nothing like that, listen to me. There’s a woman at HQ, she works in the Records Office.”

“There's a Records Office? What were you doing in the Records Office?” Sam asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Listen, there's this place that she has down in the restricted zone, and she showed me all of these things, old things, from before. Before Mother Sue, before any of this,” he said, waving in the general direction of city. “Did you know people used to _make_ music, not with computers but with their hands and with their voice? And the song!”

“The song? What are you talking about, Blaine?” Tina asked.

“ _To call for hands from above to lean on_ ,” Blaine sang, “that song. Heartbeats. The one everybody was talking about. I wrote that.”

“Yes, that’s sort of your job, dude,” Sam said.

“No, you don’t get it. I **wrote** it. That’s not how it was supposed to sound. I changed it.”

Sam and Tina shared a look over Blaine's head, their faces grave in sudden understanding.

“I took the original words and I changed them. Tina, remember how you said it was different than anything you’d heard before? How it made you stop. _I_ did that.”

Tina stuttered a string of false starts before breathing out Blaine's name.

“Why’d you do it?” asked Sam, he wasn’t judging just curious.

“I just wanted to. There was something the new girl said-- Marley. Her first day on the job she said that what she was working on ‘didn’t sound right’. And the thing is, I know that. I’ve always known that. I’ve just been ignoring it all my life. And I thought, I spend all this time making something and yet put nothing of myself in it. I mean, what makes my work any different than any other programmer’s? Absolutely nothing. She said ‘there’s something missing’. And I realized the missing part is me. That’s what the dreams are about.”

“Blaine, what you’re doing is dangerous. If you got caught…” Tina trailed off.

“That used to scare me. Not anymore.”

He told them all about June, about the things she kept hidden in the abandoned theater. He told them about everything they'd all been deprived of and as he kept on talking Sam and Tina’s apprehension turned into cautious excitement.

“Why do we always come here, and I mean this spot specifically.” Blaine asked.

“Because there are no cameras,” Sam answered, realization finally settling.

“Exactly. Why would we seek privacy if we have nothing to hide? Because we understand, however instinctively, that our lives, our words, should be our own. And that they’re not, no matter what Mother Sue says.”

Blaine licked his lips and sat straighter.

“Listen, I think we can make a difference. June says we can put the world back to how it was. That all we need to do is remind people they have the freedom to choose. But I can't do it on my own. So, are you in?”

 


	3. Bohemian Rhapsody

**1.**

 

In the hottest months of the year, the grasslands had to be kept hydrated, otherwise, the faintest spark could set them aflame. For the people who would come to be known as The Bohemians, Blaine Anderson had been that spark that kindled the fire that slept inside them. He would become this for all us, one day, but it all started as a tiny flutter in the clandestine haven of 72nd Street.

 

One by one they'd come to be initiated: Sam and Tina, Blaine's most loyal lieutenants; Marley, the young girl whose honest spirit had awoken a bravery in Blaine he didn't know he possessed; Kurt, who'd always been quiet in his irreverence; Rachel, Santana, Artie. They in turn brought friends. Brittany, Ryder, Jake. Spirits identifying kindreds, and so their ranks grew. The shadows receded from the gallery and Broadway was once again lit up with bright lights and textures, drama and the echoey texture of the machine June called the Jukebox. Some nights it was just June and Blaine, pouring over her research and cataloging the new information she managed to sneak out of the Records department. They were trying to reconstruct the timeline of how and when the music died, but there was still a piece that eluded them. Other nights they congregated on the main stage dancing around the jukebox, while Blaine sat in a corner, his dream journal in his lap, reassembling the words he now knew were memories of songs from long ago.

It’d been one of the latter nights when June approached him and deemed them ready.

“For what?” Blaine asked.

“Your own song.”

 

...

 

“Okay guys, listen up,” Blaine called out . “I want to try something. Can you gather around. Ryder? Artie?”

Everyone stopped what they were doing, curious. Blaine looked back at June and she smiled at him encouragingly. Blaine handed out sheets of handwritten notes.

“What’s this?” Rachel asked.

“It’s a song.”

“Where’d you get it?” Tina said.

“I heard it, in a dream. I thought we might try to bring it to life. The old way. No computers.”

“How exactly are we supposed to do that?” Rachel asked.

“Anything can be a musical instrument, if you use it right,” June stepped in. “Now watch.”

She clapped her hands twice in quick succession, followed by a third forceful clap so that it sounded like “clap-clap _CLAP_.” She did it again, and then again until the rhythm registered among the crowd.

“You got it? Now listen to this,” she moved across the room toward a stuffed armchair and beat the same rhythm on the back cushion. “Hear how that sounds different, like it’s muffled, far away. Now if I put the two together, it sounds like this: thud-thud _clap_. And that, my sweet little hummingbirds, is how you make music. You try it.”

“Like this?” Rachel asked and then stomped her feet against the wooden floor in the same beat June had demonstrated.

“Yes! Now you try it,” she said pointing to someone else. One by one they tried their hand, using shoes and cups and sticks, plastic containers, hands, feet until Broadway reverberated with the synchronous sound of thud-thud _clap_ , laughter, breathing and scratch-scratch _snap_.

In the middle of it all Blaine stood, eyes closed, head tilted back. The sound swelled, the vibrations all encompassing and alive. They surged, Blaine felt them all around his body, crawling up like electric charges. The shout when it came, was instinctual, primal. Inevitable:

 

_“Buddy you're a young man, hard man shoutin’ in the street gonna take on the world some day.”_

 

The last note hung in the space, tangible. It was as if time were suspended, for that second, and all sound stopped. Blaine raised a fist in the air, the other curled at his side, and sang:

“ _We will, we will rock you_!”

And just like that the spell was broken, the enchantment lifted, and as one voice the room broke out into a choir, _singing we will, we will rock you_.

  
  
  


* * *

 

By day The Bohemians continued serving their country in the ways they'd always done. By night they came together in the abandoned theater and breathed life anew into it. It went on for a month. A glorious month of friendship and giving life to Blaine's once nonsensical scribbles. A month of camaraderie, freedom and growth. But it changed, as these things do. They allowed themselves to forget, and like the child who covers his eyes and thinks himself hidden, they thought themselves safe.

  
  


No one had heard from June in three days. The first time she didn't show up to the theater, they thought nothing of it. They didn't all show up every night. They had quotas to fill, family to see. Not to mention that it'd be too suspicious to be gone from home every night. The second night she didn't show they began to wonder, but it wasn't until the third that worry began to creep up on them.

June's apartment, when Sam swung by, looked empty and her next door neighbor said she hadn’t heard from June in days. The morning of the fourth day Blaine made the trip to the Records Office just the once, and found it equally deserted. He couldn't risk going back.

They were onto them. No other explanation. But still they had to keep going, like nothing mattered, lest they give themselves away.

Days went by in exhausting routine. Blaine sat in this workstation for hours on end and wrote words of patriotism that left a bitter taste in his mouth. He hated himself a little for being able to sit in his lab and come up with those words while June was somewhere out there. He wanted to be the person June thought him as, but he wasn't sure how. There was still so much June had to tell him. In a moment of weakness he almost went to Sebastian to ask if he knew what had happened to her. He felt like a cracked window, like at any moment, at the slightest provocation, the pieces would fall to the ground.

Each night they would rendezvous at 72nd street and hoped it would finally be the night when June's husky voice welcomed them to Broadway. But the moment never came. And three days turned into five, and then seven and then ten.

**…**

 

“We're not going to get her back. But we can't just sit here and do nothing. We have to do for the people what you did for us,” Marley said to Blaine on the 10th night of June's disappearance, after a long overdue discussion about what to do about it.

They were all sitting in a circle on the stage with nothing but the spotlight illuminating them. They looked at Blaine like he had all the answers, but he was as lost as they were.

“You said it yourself, Blaine. You said all we have to do is remind the people they can choose,” Tina added.

He had said that, and he believed it with every fiber of his being. But he wasn't as fearless as he they all thought him. Who was he really, other than a simple man with talents he couldn’t even show for fear of retribution? What could a song do in the face of a tyranny so benevolent it wasn't even recognized as such?

Words, though, they had always had the potential for meaning. How had Mother Sue come to power anyway if not via words? How was it that June had phrased it as? “While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power.” Words offered the means to meaning, and for those who willing to listen, the enunciation of truth. A plan formed inside Blaine's head. A reckless, foolishly perfect plan.

“You guys are right, of course you are,.” he said. “But if we do this, if we expose them, there's no turning back. We'll be nothing but a virus on their hard drive, and they'll stop at nothing until they point their arrow at us and drag us to trash.”

“So what's the plan?” Sam said.

“The Tricentennial celebration. We take it over.”

A murmur broke out amongst the group.

“It's only logical. When else are we going to have the chance to reach that many at once? I was assigned the job of composing the Commemoration Anthem, and Artie, you're on the committee for the video montages, right?”

Artie nodded. The committee was headed by Blaine's own brother and Blaine was torn for a second. Their act of sedition would surely kill Cooper's career, but short of bringing Cooper into their operation—which was out of the question—he saw no way around it.

“That means we already have an in. But you have to understand this. If we do this, there's no going back to GaGa land for me. I can’t talk my way out of that one,” Blaine said. “Once it’s a coincidence. Twice it’s a pattern. We'll be outcasts, forever, no longer a member of the consumerist race. I'm willing to take the fall for all of us. There's no reason for you guys to be dragged down with me. I won’t ask for what you won’t give freely.”

“Don’t you get it, Blaine?” Marley said. “We already crossed the line when we decided to follow you. How could we ever go back, knowing what we know now? No. We stand together.”

She reached out to grab Tina’s hand, and Tina reached for Sam’s. Sam reached for Artie, who reached for Rachel. One by one they all linked hands until the circle was completed.

“It’s all or nothing.”

* * *

  
  


**3.**

 

_“Artie, you brought a computer in here? Are you crazy?”_

_“Calm yo' tits, Blaine, I turned off the micro-transreceivers.”_

_“You can do that?”_

_“I can do more than that.”_

 

...

 

The plan was simple enough in conception: write a song of protest, record themselves performing it, and then Blaine and Artie would replace the real video with their own so that it would play right during the Tricentennial proceedings, ensuring everyone in the nation saw it. It was the only way. Intercepting and hacking the broadcast was too risky. Artie could turn off the micro-transreceivers in the computer, but masking and redirecting a wireless feed was beyond his capabilities.

But they could do it. They had the abilities and the know how to carry out their plan. The tricky part was actually getting away with it. They had no way of anticipating what kind of chaos would ensue. Blaine only knew they couldn't afford to be there to witness the aftermath firsthand. Those without Party jobs, like Sam, were safe, and they would stay behind in the theater and watch the show from there.

The trouble was that most of them did have Party jobs and thus were required to attend the Parade. There would be check-ins, so skipping it entirely was out of the question. They'd have to somehow make a getaway and hope nobody noticed their absence until they were back and safe in the confines of the theater.

...

 

_"Sam?"_

_"Not much. It's mainly plastics and hydrocarbons._

_But, we got a sheet of tin that we can wobble._

_Some pebbles that make a nice rattle, and a bottle we can blow across,_

_and a piece of wire to twang._ ”

 

...

 

They tried to make the most of what was already available to them among the treasures of the Broadway. Kurt and Tina found a collection of Venetian bird masks hidden inside a trunk, which would be perfect for concealing their identities. They were gorgeous, decorated with fluffy feathers, embroidered ribbon and jewels. The most wonderful thing was that no two masks looked the same, so even if they were covering their faces, the masks would not be erasing their individual identities. Kurt and Tina quickly decided they would use them as inspiration for their costume design.

Blaine for his part toiled away at constructing a song out of nothing. He couldn’t use the state of the art equipment of his lab in the Music Programming Division. And even if he could, he wasn't sure he wanted to. But he also had no working instruments, and no way of procuring any. June was sure they were still instruments in existence, hidden somewhere in Suetopia but if she knew where exactly, she never told him. For a brief time he considered using one of the songs in his notebook, a song from his dreams, or even one from the jukebox, but it wasn't fitting. It was a new era they were trying to usher in. It should be a new song. A song that spoke of their present hurt and not the past they'd been deprived of.

Every night, long after everyone else had gone home, he would stay up sequestered in the bowels of 72nd Street banging trash cans against each other and bringing wooden sticks down on stretched leather, armed with nothing but scraps from Sam's construction sites, his anger and the computer Artie had modified. Then he sun would come up, he'd go to work and the cycle would start anew.

 

...

  
  


_"Kurt, Tina, how are the costumes coming?"_

_“Seven down...”_

_“...five to go.”_

  
  


_“Santana, choreography?"_

_“Already teaching the most hopeless cases.”_

  
  
  


_“The storyboards are ready, Blaine!”_

_“Thanks, Rachel.”_

  
  


_“Marley?”_

_“Marley?”_

  
  


...

“Marley?”

“I can’t,” Marley said.

“Okay, let’s try something different.”

Blaine led her to the quarters he'd claimed as his and had her sit on her floor, across from him. He dimmed the lights, leaving only the subtlest of glows coming from the electric candles he'd placed around his room.

“Close your eyes,” Blaine said.

Marley gave him a dubious look but eventually complied.

“Now think about the dream, the one where you're a bird. Forget about the images. Think about how you feel in the dream.”

“I feel--”

“No, don’t tell me yet, just let yourself feel it. Now, think about the end of dream, what they do to you. Think about the moment when you wake up in your bed, back to reality. Now, how do you feel?”

Marley opened her eyes and the young girl with wide, glistening eyes was gone, replaced by a woman capable of channeling her hurt and anger into art.

“I feel cheated,” she said.

“Good. Now write it.”

 

The plan began to take shape over the following days as they all smuggled in everything they would need and also built up stores of food and other necessities, knowing the possibility of having to remain underground for a time was high. So sheets, pillows, food and other necessities had to join the surplus of contraband.

 

...

  
  


The stage was set and the curtains drawn. For the first time in almost three hundred years of silence, Broadway geared up for a show. From his private quarters Blaine heard the revelry downstairs, the pounding of feet, the laughter, the shouted last minute instructions as Artie readied his equipment and Santana wrangled her dancers.

His own costume lay on the bed, ready to be picked up and donned, but Blaine wasn't sure he himself was ready. He looked up at the wall at the only poster he'd claimed for himself. In the picture, a young man stood between parted curtains, encased in a circle of light. He had his back to the audience, as if he were looking into the source of light. It was a simple image, much simpler than some of the other posters around the theater, but Blaine found it spoke to him. When he took the poster he'd explained to June his reasons. She'd laughed then in that way she had; somewhere between fond and patronizing.

“Doing a bit of presumptions self-reflection there?”

“What?” Blaine mumbled, momentarily confused and startled.

Kurt leaned against the doorway to Blaine's room and laughed a little, pointing to the caption below the figure of the young man in the poster.

 

****

**“ _Some lives are meant to be extraordinary_.”**

 

“Oh, no, that's not what I was doing. I just like looking at it.”

“I was joking. It was a joke.”

“Right. Sorry. So, what can I do for you?”

“We're ready downstairs. Just waiting on you,” Kurt said.

“Oh.”

Kurt was in full costume already, his sparkly hooded robe shimmered every time he moved. Blaine smiled and complimented Kurt on the design. They would look great under the lights and fog.

“I made you something,” Kurt said. “I found this fabric  in one of the trunks, and it wasn't right for the costumes, but I just had to use it.”

He thrust a cloth package at Blaine. Blaine unwrapped it carefully. It was a jacket, of militaristic fashion, not unlike the ones they all wore as part of their uniform. Except it was bright yellow. It had six buckles that came together in the front and adjustable tabs on the shoulders that snapped closed at the seam where the curve of the shoulders began.

“It's beautiful,” Blaine said.

“I know you can’t wear it up there, but soon enough it'll be moot anyway. “

Kurt took the jacket back from Blaine. He tapped on Blaine’s shoulder lightly until Blaine turned him around and allowed Kurt to help him into the jacket. As he slid it on Blaine felt the last piece of the puzzle snap into place.

“There. It fits. You should wear it now, for the video.”

“I thought we were all wearing the same costume?”

“Yeah, I know we said that, but you should have something that sets you apart. You are our leader. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you.”

“That's exactly what I'm afraid of.”

“I know you doubt yourself, Blaine. But we don't. We wouldn't be here if we did. I can't tell you that everything's going to magically work out in our favor. But what I can promise is the we'll be here if it doesn't.”

“Thanks, Kurt. Now let's get this show on the road.”

* * *

  
  


**4.**

  
  


No cent had been spared in the beautification effort for Tricentennial and Suetopia's capital City was gilded with garlands and celebratory propaganda. Mother Sue's face was everywhere, her knowing gaze more ubiquitous than ever before. On the humid June morning of Suetopia's three hundredth birthday, the masses poured out into the streets, lining the blocked off roads, ready for the Parade. They waved pom-poms in the air and trilled on shrill whistles.

Blaine Anderson, dressed in the stuffy formal uniform he only wore once a year on Constitution Day, shouldered his way through the crowd on his way to Suetopia Tower. The Parade hadn’t started yet but the crowds' chants of 'Mother knows best' were already deafening. Blaine did his best to tune them out. They couldn't compete with the melody playing in his mind in any case. There was laughter in his heart and he bit his lips, lest that laughter exploded out unrestrained.

It was the first day of the rest of his life.

They marched in formation all the way from S Tower, through Constitution Avenue and finally ending the procession in Union Square where a stage had been set up for all the dignitaries and higher ups. Behind the stage a hologram screen had been erected just for the occasion. It was massive, nearly the size of a building, and Blaine heard from someone it would project 7 gigapixels per inch.

The cannons placed around Union Square exploded in a shower of fireworks and confetti and the festivities began. The squad of decorated Enforcers that fronted the parade whistled in unison and the crowd stood at attention, right hands over their hand to listen to the Commemoration Anthem.

The screen went black, and then pixel by pixel words materialized:

 

**“What you're about to see is an original work. It should nonetheless be played at maximum volume.”**

 

A sudden burst of chaotic drumming shook the crowd. Five seconds later another set of deeper drums joined the first. Then a third. In the screen a blue light shone and a face appeared from the void. The figure in the screen was hooded, and wore a mask in the shape of a bird. Suddenly her jaw moved and a melody emerged from her throat:

 

_If I was a bird / I would fly high over the world/ Come home at night to your garden/ Build a nest among the branches/ And I'd comb your hair with my beak/ If I was a bird_

 

The light changed. Beams of pink and purple revealed eleven other figures, equally attired in glittery hooded cloaks and Venetian masks. Two of them banged on drums, another blew on a wooden stick. Three others alternated beating a tall plastic pole. All the while the first figure remained front and center. She sang:

 

_But you wanted me to be a girl/ Without feathers without urge_

 

Two of the masked men circled the girl and pulled on her cloak, violently ripping her sleeves.

 

_Then my wings quickly disappeared/ And I left was only fear/ And I proclaim the reason why I'll have to fly_

 

It was then when the officials finally realized there was something wrong. A murmur broke out throughout the crowd, growing like a wave. By then everyone had noticed there were actual people and not cyber-creations dancing on the screen.

From his place in the crowd Blaine saw the head of Enforcement arguing with the techs in charge of the projection. On the screen, the masked figures danced on--sensual, carnal, frenetic. Uncontrolled. It was beautiful and Blaine didn't want to understand a world where the people wouldn’t be moved by it. As the song broke down into an unrestrained, primal cacophony, Blaine made his exit. He walked through the crowd calm and at peace, looking back only once just in time to see the projection of himself, shrouded in his yellow jacket, raise a fist in the air.

* * *

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


**5.**

****  
  


It was Thursday. The third Thursday of the month, to be exact. If it were an ordinary third Thursday of the month right about then Blaine would be walking through the front door of his parents' house to suffer through another uneasy meal where he would pretend there was nothing wrong. His father would be glued to the telescreen. His mother would cook too much. And Cooper, in an effort to fix what he considered to be wrong with Blaine’s life, would dole out patronizing advice.

It had been a week since the Tricentennial Celebration. A week of hiding and not knowing how to proceed. The first few days had gone by without much trouble, high as they were in the adrenaline of success, but Blaine was beginning to feel anxious. They had done what they did to avenge June, and hopefully open the Pandora's Box of each citizen's curiosity, but the truth was that was all they had. There were no further plans. They wanted to save the world, but had no idea how to do it.

Blaine had taken to spending his time up on the catwalk near the ceiling, getting lost in the tangle of old wires. From up there, he could see Tina and Rachel sitting by the gutted piano. Kurt lost in his threads and needles. Sam and Artie engaged in a lively conversation. Marley, so bright and beautiful, like a bird. There was joy down there, chaos and disorder. There were shadows, but no secrets.

They were happy, but only because they didn't have to be.

And yet...

It was the third Thursday of the month.

He'd never given much thought to how he'd feel if he couldn't see his family again. There were a constant, another part of his everyday routine. But at that moment all Blaine wanted was to see his mother's face. As he looked around the theater at the faded posters, and wished he could hold a picture of his mom in his hands. Overwhelmed by the nostalgia of a past that wasn't his. Not really.

He was then struck with a horrible thought. He didn't trust the Enforcers not to go after his family in their quest to find him. So far he'd kept his phone turned off and stored away in the pocket of the jacket Kurt had sewed for him. There was no real use for it, and turning it on could prove dangerous, but in that moment Blaine faltered. He took it out of its hiding spot. His thumb hovered over the power button, hesitating. If he turned it on they would track him down here.

That was if they were even looking for him.

But, of course they were. Why wouldn't they be?

They'd made it very obvious who all had been involved in the act of sedition by not bothering to show up for work the next day. It had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but maybe they'd acted rashly. Maybe it would've been okay.

But they’d taken June. There was no further question about. Had she still been around, she would’ve come back after Tricentennial. There was no doubt in Blaine’s mind they would not hesitate to go for Blaine's mother, too. Right then he made a decision.

He'd be quick. In and out, just to check on her, make sure she was alright. He didn't intend to tell anyone where he was going, he wouldn't be long anyway, but Sam caught him trying to sneak out.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to go see my mother. What do you think happened when I didn’t show up to work? Where’s the first place they’d go look for me? I didn't think this through. I have to go make sure she's alright.”

“Are you leaving?”

Blaine shut his eyes and cursed under his breath.

“Marley, it's just for a moment. There's something I have to do. I'll be back by this time tomorrow, at the latest.”

“And if you're not?” Sam asked.

“Carry on. You carry on.”

“Just like that. As if nothing really mattered,” Sam said, indignant. But Blaine saw no other alternative.

The door to the theater closed behind him with the weight of finality. _Goodbye everybody_. He had to leave them all behind and face the truth.

 

* * *

 

**6.**

 

On foot, and taking the long confusing paths of June's shortcuts, it would take Blaine well over an hour to get back downtown. Which would put him just in time to catch the last of the evening's rush hour. He was counting on the crowd to help him hide in plain sight. He had no idea what the people had been told regarding the incident, if anything. Truthfully, he wouldn't put it past the Party to pass it off as planned. Still, he couldn't be too cautious.

As he approached the hub of The City he noticed something was off. It was the quiet at first, that made him pause. Then it was the solitude. The streets were empty, save for a few stragglers hurrying places. The hair at the back of Blaine's neck stood on end; he suddenly felt watched. It was the same feeling he used to get when standing before the portrait of Mother Sue in S Tower.

He turned around and saw the most magnificent thing. It was him, or his image he should say—head bowed, a fist in the air—sil houetted in black against the rough concrete of the Central Bank building. He knew then it had all been worth it. Somebody out there had heard their song and got the message.

He walked toward the wall and touched fingertips to the image. His fingers came away inked and sticky. It was fresh. He quickly looked around, but there was no one there. Whoever had vandalized the building was already gone.

It wasn't the only graffiti Blaine saw that evening. The further he went into The City the more he saw them, the silhouettes sprayed on the sides of buildings. But nothing could have prepared him for what he found in Union Square. He saw it from miles away; it was impossible to miss really. Somebody had defaced Mother Sue's portrait. The eyes were still cunning and too alive but now they stared at Blaine from behind a painted bird mask, not unlike the ones they'd all worn in the video.

Blaine stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and stared. He couldn't understand how it was still up. Why hadn’t they covered it up? Why would they let people see it? It was then that the emergency system alarm blared and a voice declared from the speakers:

_ “Attention Citizens, the mandatory curfew is still in effect. Please, remain in your homes until curfew has been lifted. We repeat, stay in your homes. Enforcers will be patrolling. Stay in your homes.” _

Blaine heard the sirens before he saw any cars approach, and he knew he had to get out of there, and fast. His parents' house was too far to get to unnoticed, but his own apartment was only three blocks away. Then the lights materialized down Constitution Avenue-- a whole hoard of patrol cars, driving his way.

“Shit.”

He hurried to hide in an alley between the two nearest buildings, plastering his back to the wall. Then he heard his name, curt, in a whisper, like someone was avoiding being heard. He looked up and his heart stopped.

“We can't be out here, Blaine, come on.”

Blaine looked between the road and his companion. He waited until the last patrol car turned the corner, and ran.

* * *

 

**7**.

 

A lance of pain stabbed through the back of Blaine’s head and pulsed around his eyes, jolting him awake. Eyes open or closed, it didn't make a difference. The pit of black was all engulfing, suffocating. That was the first thing Blaine became aware of. He tried to move but he found himself bound, arms legs, all cuffed to a rigid chair. Then he noticed the contraption on his head. It felt like some type of helmet.

The last thing he remembered was running down Constitution Avenue in the opposite direction of the Enforcement motorcade. Then... nothing. He thrashed in his chair, but the binds didn’t budge. He screamed and cursed until his throat felt raw, but nobody came. Then he sobbed—heaving lungfuls that wracked his whole body with their force. He strained to hear something, anything, from beyond the dark room, but no noise made itself known. Eventually exhaustion overtook him and he collapsed in the chair.

When he came to he had no way of knowing how long it’d been or what they’d done to him in the meantime. There were no windows in the room. No clocks. He wasn’t hungry but had no idea of knowing if that was indication of the passage of time.

Suddenly a door opened and a swath of white cut through the dark, leaving Blaine half blind and disoriented. From the light emerged a figure. A face appeared from the void. It was a face Blaine knew well. Betrayal burned hot beneath his heart. He really should have seen it coming. He opened his mouth to call out his name...

“S---

… but the figure flashed a bright light in Blaine's face, making him moan in pain. His eyes watered in protest.

“Have you read the sacred texts?” the voice said.

“What? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The legend clearly states that musical instruments still exist somewhere on Suetopia, at the place of champions, hidden within the living rock. What do you know of this?”

“I don't know anything!”

“Why does the woman say you do?”

“I don't know,” Blaine roared.

“Liar,” the figure said, and then slapped Blaine hard across the face.

“We know what you’ve done, Blaine Anderson. You defied your Mother’s teachings, you corrupted others, and then you dare make an attempt on the stability of this nation on our most sacred of days. You think yourself smarter than me? You’re not. You are nothing but a terrorist, and a cheat. Do you know what happens to little boys who lie to their mothers?”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Kill you? Of course not. What did you think this was, some medieval inquisition? No! We're merely going to kill your soul, and empty your brain of such absurd notions as real music and individual thought. Besides, killing you would turn you into a martyr. Martyrs are immortal. And we can’t have that. You’re going to go back and show all your little friends what happens to naughty children who disobey their Mothers.”

The helmet covering Blaine’s head tightened, pressing uncomfortably against his skull. A gag was forced into Blaine's mouth, and he panted through it, his spittle spraying everywhere.

“Your rebellion is a fantasy. There will be no rhapsody. No such state of being exists. And you see, Blaine, asking someone to believe in a fantasy, no matter how comforting that fantasy, is cruel. We can’t have that. Remember Blaine, just because you’re free to say whatever you want, doesn’t always mean you should.”

Blaine saw his torturer pull down on a lever and the machine he was strapped to turned on, sending electric shocks all over his body. Blaine spasmed, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and then _white light messing up the mind, white heat, going to the toes._

_ [Lord have mercy, I'm just a poor boy, Lord have mercy, let me go]. _

_White light going down to my brain, hey don’t you know it’s gonna make me insane,_

_He's just a poor boy, they laughed, let us spare him his life from this monstrosity._

_Softly, he said, I will mangle your mind and will not let you go._

_(Let me go!)_

_Never, never let you go. No, we will not let you go._

_Keep your head under the water_

_(please!)_

_for an hour, for groveling and spewing and various offenses, puncture the bloat with the wing of a sparrow, puncture the eyeballs, that seep all the muck up and_

_left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping._

_Hell, who can sleep in this heat this night?_

_who let you in?_

_If I knew, then I could get out._

_There's a room where the light won't find you while the walls come tumbling down, and my senses have been stripped,_

_my hands can't feel to grip,_

_my toes too numb to step. I'm ready to go anywhere, I'm ready for to fade into my own parade._

_Cast your dancing spell my way, oh Mother,_

_I promise to go under it._

* * *

__  
  


**8.**

  
  


_“Good morning, sloppy babies. This is your Mother speaking. Kids, life doesn't have to be hard, not if you open up your mind and let me step inside. Rest your weary head on Mother's shoulder and let your heart decide. Life is so easy when you know the rules. If you're feeling down and your resistance is low. Take a cyber-shopping trip and let yourself go. Give me your life. Don't play hard to get. This is a free world. All you have to do is fall in love, and play the game. Everybody play the game of love. My game of love has just begun.”_

Blaine Anderson woke with the sun, the half-remembered dream slipping out the edges of his memory as his senses came alive with consciousness. The curtains glided open, as if pulled by invisible hands, and the nascent sunrise illuminated the bedroom. Then all at once he remembered: being captured, the betrayal, his mind violated.

But he _remembered_.

Finally the puzzle of his life laid out, in full blown technicolor: The agony of disease; lovers found and lost; his body betraying him in slow decay. But also, the roar of the audience, awesome and searing, like lightning; holding the attention of millions captive, with nothing else but the sound of his voice.

Having everything in the world and still being the loneliest man.

He jumped out of bed, stumbling, his legs weak. He checked the date. Two days. He’d only been gone two days. And yet he felt as if entire lifetimes had passed. Could feel it deep in the marrow, a bone-deep exhaustion that threatened to bring him down. He hurried to the window as fast as his tired legs could carry him, and looked for the portrait. It was there still but it looked normal again. The graffitied mask was gone.

Blaine strained his eyes and looked into every direction but he couldn't find the other marks of his own silhouette. It was as if he'd hallucinated them. As if they'd never been there at all. The acrid taste of fear pooled in his mouth.

The doorbell rang and Blaine jumped. Who could it possibly be? He walked to the front door and looked through the peephole, throwing the door open a second later.

“Sam, thank God, you scared the crap out me. I thought you were... someone else.”

“Nope, just me.”

Something was wrong. Sam was too calm.

“Dude, why are you dressed like that?” Sam said, pointing to Blaine's pajamas.

“What do you mean?”

“We're going to be late. You said you'd come with me. Don't tell me you forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“Oh my God, you did. My aptitude test.”

“Aptitude test. For the Party? Sam, come on, quit it. We don't have time for this.”

“Yeah, I agree, which is why....”

“We need to get back to the theater, _now_ , before they come find us.”

Sam looked at him like he'd grown an extra limb.

“The theater? What are you--- Are you okay? You're not making much sense.”

“I'm not making--” Blaine stopped, the switches in his brain flipped and realization came over him like a cold burst of water.

“Oh, my God. What did they do to you?”

 

**...**

  
  


It was a hot morning in July and the clocks were striking ten to 8:00, Blaine, in an effort to escape the vile heat, slipped quickly through the doors of Suetopia Tower. Everything looked exactly as he remembered it, from the polished marble floors, to the click-clack of women’s shoes, and most of all, the portrait staring back at him. He didn't stop to look at it as he walked to the elevators that would take him to the North Tower. He touched his ID to the reader and waited for the system to confirm his destination. His eyes automatically found the camera mounted on the corner. He looked right at it, tried to imagine who was on the other side. Then he imagined himself giving it the finger.

The elevator stopped on the 27th floor and Blaine got out. He walked down the corridor toward his division, the whirr of the cameras more conspicuous than ever before. The mechanical voice welcomed him into the department but Blaine felt anything but welcome. He felt like an alien or something like that. His workstation was exactly as he'd left it all those weeks ago and they were no signs anyone else had been there. He was beginning to question whether the last weeks had even been real or just another one of his vivid dreams.

“Good morning, Blaine,” Director Schuester said from somewhere behind Blaine.

Blaine went rigid and turned around slowly. Schuester rested against the doorway the lab, cup of coffee in hand.

“I hope you had a good vacation. It's good to have you back. You were missed.”

Blaine didn't say anything. Couldn't.

He _remembered_.

Schuester's face had been the one to come out of the darkness in that horrible room where they'd tried to violate his mind. Or had he dreamed that too? Schuester smirked, only for a second, but it was a second too long. Blaine knew then it'd been no dream. It had really happened. It had all happened. And Schuester thought his mind had been wiped clean and reprogrammed. Blaine had to keep him believing that until he figured out what to do, so he smiled.

“Yes, thank you. Glad to be back.”

  
  


Throughout the day Blaine discovered he and Sam hadn't been the only ones captured and tortured. Marley had walked into the lab mere minutes after Blaine and greeted Blaine normally, expressing how glad she was to have him back because sometimes those machines still confused her. At lunch Tina and Rachel demanded he show them pictures of expensive hotel they all apparently believed he had spent the last two weeks luxuriating in. He'd dropped hints about the Tricentennial incident, desperate from some shred of recognition, a wink of an eye. Anything. But all he got was praise for a patriotic song he never wrote.

After lunch he secreted himself in the bathroom and vomited all the contents of his stomach, and continued retching until nothing but bitter bile came up. He wanted nothing more than to lay down and cry, but that was a privilege he couldn't indulge in.

He was terrified of going back to the 72nd Street. He didn’t want to see what the Enforcers could have done to it. He needed the memory of the place to remain as he’d left it. It was the only thing carrying him at the moment.

 

The day seemed never-ending. Blaine's mind was too caught up in his grief to get any actual work done, but he put on a passable act for Schuester. When he got home he immediately went into the kitchen to serve himself the biggest bowl of ice-cream he could stomach, for once feeling grateful for Mother Sue's superfluous kitchen replicators. He took the bowl into his bedroom with the intention of curling up in bed for the rest of the night and giving into his despair, but the sight of his yellow jacket laying on the bed made him stop.

He hadn't left the jacket there when he left in the morning. He certainly hadn’t been wearing it when he woke up. He put the bowl of ice-cream down on top of his dresser and approached the bed. He surveyed the room, but nothing else looked out of place. There was a piece of paper sticking out of one of the front pockets of his jacket. He slowly drew it out and felt his breath catch when he recognized the handwriting. He let himself fall into the bed as he read:

 

> _“I must make haste, for I fear my arrest is imminent. Forgive me, Blaine, for not bidding you farewell in person. You deserved better, you all deserve better, but they follow me everywhere now and we cannot allow 72nd Street to be compromised. I have doomed you all to a life underground. Forgive me, I only wanted to shine a light on what I thought the world should see, and I used you all for my selfish purposes. My research is at a standstill. So much has been forcefully disappeared. I never discovered the exact day on which the music died, if such a day could be isolated, but it is clear to me now that it all began with the ancient entertainment phenomenon once known as Lady Gaga. Once revered by the marginalized as the champion of all individual expression, Lady Gaga turned out to be nothing but a false idol. The first cyber celebrity created by the Sylvester Corporation for the sole purpose of capitalizing on the emotions of the outcasts. But with this most heinous betrayal our Mother has taught us the most valuable lesson of all-- to defeat the impossible enemy you must speak to it in its own language. If you can't beat them, join them. Remember that, Blaine, always. It's time to start living, my boy. Time to take a little from this world we were given. My fight is over. I am old now, and it won't be long until they come for me. So I'll be throwing off my shawl, for you are my time, and watching your flings be flung all over, makes me feel young all over again. I don't know what will become of me, but I know you will succeed at the task appointed to you. When it's darkest, even when it seems most hopeless, remember, nothing ever lasts forever. Follow the beat of your heart. It will show you the way."_

 

* * *

 

**9.**

  
  


A week passed since the morning when Blaine woke up in his bed in the aftermath of torture and Blaine was suiting up for battle. The sun sank into the horizon, but darkness didn’t come. As ever, the advertising screens continued in constant movement. In the distance, the twin towers of Suetopia Global rose like stalagmites, both beautiful and deadly. From his bedroom window, Blaine took it all in one last time, for once seeking out The Face purposely.

He fastened the buttons on his yellow jacket and fixed the sleeves. He patted the front pocket, making sure the data stick was still secure in there, and walked away.

Blaine hurried warily down the street, eyes everywhere but on the road ahead. It was quiet out, for once, no sound but the sound of his feet. It was true, he thought, that the strongest metal was forged in the hottest fire. They could beat him, they could cheat him, treat him bad and leave him when he was down. But Blaine was ready, and standing on his own two feet. He’d been brought back to complete a mission, and he was unwilling to let anyone or anything get in the way of it again.

He entered Suetopia Tower via the gym. It was the safest, less conspicuous plan of action; people were expected to use it. It was thankfully almost empty at the late hour and Blaine crossed it without drawing attention to himself.

After a quick sweep to make sure no one loitered around in the lobby, Blaine boarded an elevator toward a part of the building he hadn't visited in years, and yet his feet knew the path well and took it without circumstance.

When the elevator doors opened on the 86th floor Blaine came face to face with Sebastian Smythe. Time seemed to stop as they stared at each other. Blaine's blood ran cold. Sweat pooled at the small of his back. Even though he was terrified, he tilted his chin up in defiance.

“I’ve been tracking you since you left your place. You’re being sloppy,” Sebastian said.

Sebastian reached into the inner pocket of his uniform jacket. Blaine tracked the movement, alert, ready to bolt at the first sign of danger. But there was no need. It was Sebastian's ID badge, that which he drew out. Sebastian took one of Blaine's hands in his own and placed the badge in Blaine's hand.

“You’re going to need this,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Being brave.”

Sebastian's eyes were suspiciously shiny and he wasn't able to hold Blaine's gaze for too long.

“Now, go do whatever it is you came here to do, and get out of here before anyone notices.”

Blaine closed his palm around the badge, nodding in gratitude. He swiped the card and the steel door in front of him hissed open.

“ _Welcome Sergeant Smythe, Sebastian A_.”

The Room of Vigilance hadn't changed much since the last time Blaine had stepped foot in it, three years previous: tiny monitors stretching wall to wall, all spying on the dutiful citizens of Suetopia. But it was not the time for reminiscing.

He used Sebastian’s ID to bypass security and access the mainframe. He plugged the data stick into a port, uploaded the recording and programmed the command that would make sure it reached every home hooked to the system. By the time it played, he'd be long gone.

Sebastian was still standing guard when Blaine emerged from The Room of Vigilance and Blaine was both surprised and relieved at the fact.

“Come with me,” Blaine said, clinging to the only ally he had left anymore. How fitting and unexpected that it should be Sebastian.

Sebastian looked as if he were considering it for a second but he quickly shook his head.

“No, you go on ahead. There's something I've go to do first.”

“Ok,” Blaine said, and it felt a lot like goodbye. “I’ll see you around?”

He was halfway down the corridor when Sebastian called him back. Blaine looked over his shoulder.

“When they brought you in, I went to find your friends, but they’d gotten there before me.” Sebastian shrugged, as if with a gesture he could say _I tried_.

“Take these,” he said, tossing Blaine a set of keys. “They won't be looking for a patrol car.”

The keys felt heavy in Blaine’s hands. He carefully tucked them into the pocket at his breast.

“Stay safe, Sebastian.”

“Don't worry about me, killer. I can take care of myself. Now go.”

* * *

  
  


**10.**

 

Blaine drove through the night, running on nothing but adrenaline and sheer will. By the time the old arena appeared in his view his eyes burned with fatigue and a knot of pain formed at the small of his back. It was still dark, but it wouldn't stay that way for long. Dawn approached. If he strained his eyes he could spy the faintest sliver of orange rising over in the East.

The ruins of the old arena rose like the remnants of an old earth. Jagged slabs of concrete, glass and steel circled the spaces where seats used to be. He climbed as high as he dared, scaling through concrete and steel. The jagged edges nicked at his palms but still he climbed. He balanced himself on a plateau and surveyed the view. Height like that had a way of making you feel powerless and small. He could see it all from up there, the entire capital city of Suetopia and the bay that engulfed it. A cool breeze lifted from the ocean and Blaine's jacket flapped in the wind.

He had been there before, he knew this. This was that place of his dreams. The place of champions, where rock and roll once lived. Up there, he felt the wind carried with it the whispers of an audience of ghosts; the whine of an electric guitar; and his own voice (the old one) screaming _are you ready_?

He spared a glance at his watch, noticing the morning address would go on any second. The wait at long last over. Static crackled and filled the air before the sound of his own voice reverberating throughout the decimated stadium startled Blaine.

_ “Rise and shine, brothers and sisters, this is the one they call The Dreamer speaking.” _

Blaine gasped in surprise and then breathed out a laugh. He had only meant for his message to replace Mother Sue’s wakeup call, but Sebastian must have changed the output, rerouting it to be broadcast throughout the outdoor speaker system as well, making Blaine's message ubiquitous. Being brave, indeed, Blaine thought.

“ _Today, like the day before and the one before that, you awake to the sound of a voice. It is not the voice of a lover coaxing you awake. It is not the voice of your child. It’s not the usual voice, the one you’re accustomed to; the voice of authority, spouting orders, telling you what to do. You don't think this odd, for it has always been that way. You get up, make your way to the bathroom to take a carefully calibrated shower and dress in the uniform someone else assigned you and then go to work in the place a computer said you were best suited for._

_ “Choice is a word you've heard and maybe even used but it's not a concept you've ever comprehended. For in this land of Suetopia there is no such thing as choice, only the illusion of it. For too long we have been told we are only entitled to that which we can buy, our lives controlled by the unfeeling language of computer programming. They will tell you it’s a paradise. A life free of uncertainty, free from the burden of responsibility. But we are not programmable. Look outside, see how the sun paints across our sky. No computer generated image could ever compare. Our lives are not our own; they are someone else's fantasy. And asking someone to believe in a fantasy, no matter how comforting, is cruel. _

_ “We deserve better. _

_ “And where once we had the freedom to object, to think and speak as we saw fit, we now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing our conformity and soliciting our submission. And we don't even notice, because we are busy being kept happy via useless products and gadgets. _

_ “Since the dawn of time a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know why you still do it. But I'm here to tell you there is nothing to be afraid of. _

_“There comes a time where every child must abandon home and make it on their own. It is our time now, Mother, let us go. You have tried to tame us with fear-mongering and the threat of torture. But we are not defeated. For your machines cannot alter what the soul knows as its truth. The children of the revolution will not be fooled._

_“While the sun hangs in the sky and the desert has sand, we'll keep on trying. While we are ruled by blind madness and pure greed, our lives dictated by tradition, superstition, false religion. We'll keep on trying. Through the sorrow, and all our splendor._

_“My brothers and sisters, you can be anything you want to be. Just turn yourself into anything you think you could ever be. Surrender, be free._

_“If there's a God or any kind of justice under the sky. If there's a point, if there's a reason to live or die. If there's an answer to the questions we feel abound to ask. Destroy your fears, brother and sisters, release your masks._

_“At the place of living rock, the place of champions, join me. Salvation is to be found there. It is yours, if you want it. You need only open your ears, your heart will show you the way.”_

 

The broadcast faded into static and all was quiet again.

 

**…**

 

The hours passed, the sun travelled east to west, but no one came. Blaine waited and waited and with every hour that passed, he despaired. He had hoped so badly that others would show, had wanted it with so much fervor that he’d never stopped to consider what he would do if his call went unheeded. What was he to do? He had nothing left to give, and everything to lose. He wanted to change the world but he was only one man against a corrupt and all-powerful corporation. His friends had been stripped from him, their precious individuality taken from them. And even his certainty in what was real hung in the balance.

_Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy?_

What would June say if swe could see him now? Tattered, demoralized. Alone. Would she regret placing her faith in him?

No.

She would tell him that as long as they breathed, then there would always be hope. “It’s not over until the fat lady sings,” she’d say.

Sing.

Of course.

Blaine still had his voice.

The fight wasn’t over.

The show must go on.

He’d told everyone their ears would show them the way; he would make good on that promise. He pulled himself upright again, closed his eyes and pulled the words out from the thread of memory. He had no music, but he wouldn’t need it. Anything could be an instrument, if used right. That was what June had taught him.

This song had been his swan song once. Even as his body decayed he’d wrenched the notes out, one last time. The old him--the one they called Freddie-- he never gave up. Who was Blaine to sully his memory then?

Blaine opened his mouth and sang:

 

_ “Empty spaces, what are we living for/ abandoned places, I guess we know the score/ On and on, does anybody know what we are looking for.” _

 

He stopped, took a deep breath, and sang louder.

 

_“Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance/ Another heartache, another failed romance/ On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?”_

 

He thought he heard voices answer-- a haunting, growing choir surrounding him. He shook it off, sure his mind was playing tricks on him. Yet, the show must go on.

A screech like the sound of scraping metal split the air. Blaine looked up just as the gateposts split open, revealing a crowd. He saw them all: Sam, Tina, Kurt, Santana, Rachel, Artie, Marley, joining him in chorus.

His throat was raw, his breath short. He couldn’t understand why his energies failed him now at the moment of truth, but he soldiered on.

 

_“My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies/ Fairy tales of yesterday will grow but never die/ I can fly, my friends”_

 

His voice amplified suddenly, the speakers coming to life once again. Out in the streets, people walked, lured by his song. He could see them. Dozens. No. Hundreds. All joining in. The show must go on. Blaine heaved a lungful of the salty ocean air and delivered the closing note:

 

_“I'll face it with a grin / I'm never giving in/ On, with the show”_

 

A sudden gust of wind whirled around the stadium as a blood-red sun dipped into the horizon, Blaine bowed his head to escape the onslaught, as his right arm raised in the air. His fingers slowly curved into a fist, as if with this simple action he could trap all the bad in the world within his hand and crush it.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this story is a reference to the album of the same name by Swedish duo The Knife. This album tries to redefine not only the ways in which music is made but also how it's consumed. So it's a very pointed reference. A lot of the music referenced here is also by The Knife. The music chosen was very important and deliberate. One of the criticisms I have against the original musical this fic is based on is the commentary that only 'old' music is worth something, that electronic music can't have meaning or a soul. I vehemently disagree with this and I tried to stay away from that while writing. Karin and Olof Dreijer (from The Knife) are two of the most groundbreaking artists I've ever come across, and that's exactly why I picked their music. I chose a lot of their songs to represent the music of Suetopia not because I think their music is vapid, but because I needed the music to sound unlike anything else that we associate with traditional music. It needed to sound inhuman. But it also becomes a tool of the revolution, as it is appropriated by Blaine and Marley to disseminate their message, and thus 'shake the habitual'. 
> 
> PS. I think everyone should listen to The Knife. I'd recommend starting with their album 'Silent Shout'.

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist at:
> 
>  
> 
> [SPOTIFY](http://open.spotify.com/user/nellylara/playlist/4U13PWWvpw0zwhRIn0PHJk)
> 
>  
> 
> [YOUTUBE](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOXfWP2iza6fUyLGnLpUyi4GG1Dh9LkDj)


End file.
